Way way back in Post 65 we talked about the challenges of interacting with digital stuff when playing the guitar. There are many possible ways of doing this, from pedals and stomp boxes on the floor, to tablets with touch-screens mounted on stands, even to touch screens embedded into guitars themselves as we see with some recent ‘smart’ acoustic guitars. My colleague Juan Martinez recently completed his PhD on the topic of ‘Encumbered Interaction’ with guitars, during which he involved guitarists in a co-design process to explore a range of potential solutions. He has published a series of papers which discuss the nature of the challenge and possible solutions, including an initial study of guitarists everyday practices that revealed the nature of the challenge [1]; using the body-focused method of soma design to explore novel solutions involving bodily interactions [2]; and ultimately designing and evaluating a novel device called the ‘stretchy strap’ [3].
The stretchy strap is an intriguing device. It’s an elastic guitar strap that can sense how much it is being stretched as the player moves the guitar against their body. Technically, Juan wove resistive yarns into the fabric of the strap so that when they get squished by its stretching they change their resistance. This is then processed by a small onboard Bela processor which converts them into the form of a regular guitar expression pedal. As a result, you can use the strap to control a wider variety of effects and functions, just as you would a foot controlled expression pedal, but now you’re controlling they effects through your whole body, not just your foot, which can feel really good, look more performative, and leave you free to wander around the stage. Neat!
Here’s a demo of the strap in action, featuring some lovely playing by my colleague Adrian Hazzard.
Turning to the Carolan guitar, we wondered whether the strap might be an option for interacting with our AI musical partner. You may remember from Post 118 that we’ve been working with Bob Sturm and Marco Amoretti at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, to develop an AI that can compose and perform (what sound like) ‘traditional’ folk tunes. The idea is that Carolan will then try to accompany this AI, much as we might a human musician. Our most recent experimental performance used a foot pedal to communicate different levels of intensity to the AI, getting it to play more or less wildly. While it worked technically, it felt a bit cumbersome and too explicit – with intensity being a conscious decision more than something that just happens while playing. It seemed obvious to try out the strap as a possible solution and so here’s a video of a very early rough test (sorry for the legs – it was our one hot day in Nottingham this summer).
It worked technically and felt interesting. Increasing intensity by ‘digging in’ (pushing down on Carolan) felt natural and potentially less explicit that pressing footswitches. It did however require fiddling round to get the right strap length and some adaptation of playing position and style too. It might be hard to physically sustain intensity for long periods due to the odd posture (perhaps a good thing as needing to physically relax would encourage one to ‘back off’ which it is all too easy to forget do in the heat of a performance or session). It would also have to be made small, robust and discrete were it to head into traditional music settings such as sessions and folk clubs. However, I certainly appreciated this more embodied way of interacting with AI. More experimentation needed ….
[3] Avila, J.M, et al, “The Stretchy Strap: Supporting Encumbered Interaction with Guitars” accepted for publication in the Journal of New Music Research (forthcoming).
Carolan Guitar 