Digital musical instruments yielding force feedback were designed and employed in a case study with the Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana. The advantages of force feedback are illuminated through the creation of a series of musical compositions. Based on these and a small number of other prior music compositions, the following compositional approaches are recommended: providing performers with precise, physically intuitive, and reconfigurable controls, using traditional controls alongside force-feedback controls as appropriate, and designing timbres that sound uncannily familiar but are nonetheless novel. Video-recorded performances illustrate these approaches, which are discussed by the composers.
IntroductionApplications of force feedback for designing musical instruments have been studied since as early as 1978 at ACROE [14,17,21,36] (Chap. 8 reports on recent advancements). Such works provide a crucial reference for understanding the role that haptic technology can play in music, and these are described in detail in a preceding chapter. The wider computer music community has demonstrated a sustained interest in incorporating force-feedback technology into musical works and projects. This has been evidenced by a series of projects during recent decades.