While performing on traditional instruments, the player's haptic channel is involved in a complex action-perception loop. Accordingly, we expect that digital musical instruments (DMIs) will especially gain from haptic technology. The project investigates how haptic feedback in musical interaction affects quality perception, user experience, and performance. The goal is to provide scientific foundations to technological and design solutions for haptic DMIs.
Touch and audition are the main senses involved while playing traditional musical instruments, and they are key to performance control and expressivity. However, current digital musical instruments (DMIs) lack haptic feedback. Project AHMI (SNF 2014-2016) studied the role of auditory and haptic modalities in instrumental performance, achieving important results in audio-tactile perception, haptic interfaces, and contributing to establish Musical Haptics as an internationally recognized topic. A book entitled “Musical Haptics” is currently being edited by Dr. Stefano Papetti and will be published by Springer in 2018.
This project continues the research set by AHMI, refining previous haptic musical interface prototypes (HSoundplane, VibroPiano, Touch-Box mkII) and investigating how haptic feedback in musical interaction affects subjective qualitative features (e.g., quality of musical instruments, user experience) and objective aspects related to performance (e.g., intonation, time accuracy).