Reciprocal sound transformations for computer supported collaborative jamming

Sammanfattning: Collaborative jamming with digital musical instruments (DMI) exposes a need for output synchronization. While temporal solutions have been established, a better understanding of how live sound transformations could be balanced across instruments is required. In this work, a technology probe for reciprocal sound transformations was designed and developed by networking the instruments of four musicians and employing layered mapping between a shared interface, high-level sound attributes, and the sound synthesis parameters of each instrument. The probe was designed and used during a series of participatory design workshops, where seven high-level attributes were constructed according to the spectromorphology framework. The analysis, where the notion of sonic narrative and the concept of flow were applied, reveals how live controlling reciprocal sound transformations facilitates collaboration by supporting role-taking, motivating the ensemble, and directing the focus of its members. While generality of the implemented attributes cannot be claimed, challenges of the chosen mapping strategy and requirements for the user interface were identified.