Beyond the controller; thoughts on electronic instrument design

The blogosphere is currently alive with talk of the new Eigenharp from eigenlabs, officially released earlier this week. The Eigenharp, which comes in two forms, a large “Eighenharp Alpha” (pictured below) costing from £3,950 and a small “Eigenharp Pico” from £349 is described by eigenlabs as

“the most revolutionary new musical instrument of the last 60 years […] Designed specifically for live performance, it is simply the most expressive electronic musical instrument ever made.”

Now this claim has got me kind of annoyed. Not because I think the design is bad, or that it isn’t a great product, but because the Eigenharp isn’t a musical instrument at all, it’s just a controller. It’s a device a performer can use to produce a stream of information that could be used to trigger or control the synthesis of sound. However the Eigenharp itself however, doesn’t produce sound, and in fact once eigenlabs open source their software the Eigenharp could be used to control pretty much any electronic device . It is no more a musical instrument than a Wacom graphics tablet, an iPhone or any other device that can emit control data that when mapped correctly can be used to synthesise sound.

This might sound like a pedantic distinction, but it is very, very important in understanding what makes something a musical instrument. The instrument isn’t just about the physical interface, but rather the combination of a number of elements working together:

• the physical body of the instrument
• the human-mechanical interface
• the sound-producing mechanism

Traditionally musical instruments have a range of sound qualities (timbre) and a largely deterministic sound response in relation to human interaction. This makes them interesting and identifiable as being one specific instrument or another. Examples of instruments or devices with instrument-like capabilities include:

• a flute
• an electric guitar played through a Marshall amp (the combination of the guitar and the amplification form the instrument in this case)
• a zero input mixing desk
• a minimoog synth

All of the above have identifying sonic traits and models of interaction. The Eigenharp provides a interface with for the performer to interact with… so what of the sound production? Well, from the eigenlabs website:

“You can load and play your own Soundfonts, Audio Unit Plugins and Midi instruments with the Eigenharp Alpha. In addition, the Alpha comes with its own native instruments (at present a software model of a Cello, Clarinet and a Synth engine). The Alpha also ships with a collection of loop libraries and several acclaimed instruments from our partners:”

So basically, the Eigenharp could sound like anything — it is just a controller, it may be an excellent controller (I’m not sure), but it is only a controller — not a musical instrument.

Which brings me to the main point of this post. We really need to move beyond the controller-centred approach to ‘instrument design’, and start thinking about what it is that we are controlling, and what the complete interaction model is. By this, I mean that we need to design for the complete sensory experience of the performer when they play an instrument, not just physical control. The complete ‘feedback loop’ might include:

• physical input
• physical response (in the form of vibration e.g. through the fingertips)
• sound production
• physical stimulus (in the form of sound from the instrument)
• (adjusted) physical input in response to audio/visual cues

All of these elements interact in complex ways to form the performer-instrument relationship. However, if we focus too heavily on the design of one element (the controller, or the sound), we end up producing not an instrument, but a system that gives the illusion of being an instrument.