Music Technology

It seems to us that music technology is a grossly misunderstood field. People tend to not accept that various aspects of technology can be combined to create music, either traditional or progressive. Further, this field does not have a dedicated performance instrument for people to identify with. It's not as simple as "violin player" or "drummer." Sure, many music tech people play keyboard, but this is merely an old interface to a new technology. Thus, it was our goal to produce a performance instrument with an interface never before seen, an instrument that uses current technology to give people in the music technology an alternative to the keyboard convention.

Instrument Design

In designing our instrument, we looked at many existing instruments, their functions and capabilities, as well as their limitations. We chose to create something that, while not the ideal instrument, allowed us certain things that have not existed in conventional music thus far.

Goals

Designing an instrument from the ground up, we had many decisions to make regarding its sound, appearance, function, and features. It was our goal from the beginning to NOT reproduce an already existing instrument. Likewise, we wanted to create something that had enough depth and functionality to it (or the potential to) so that it may be practiced and performed like any other instrument. Much like a piano, we wanted to create an instrument that anyone can likely get sound out of, but far fewer individuals would be capable of making music with. The skill set necessary for making music on this instrument at any high level would have to be practiced and mastered, just like on any other performance instrument. Further, we decided to take advantage of VR space as much as possible. Having less limitations than the real world, this afforded us the opportunity to create aspects to a musical instrument never before seen.