Mark Havryliv

The Carillon and Its Haptic Signature: Modeling the Changing Force-Feedback Constraints of a Musical Instrument for Haptic Display

The carillon is one of the few instruments that elicits sophisticated haptic interaction from amateur and professional players alike. Like the piano keyboard, the velocity of a players impact on each carillon key, or baton, affects the quality of the resultant tone; unlike the piano, each carillon baton returns a different force-feedback. Force-feedback varies widely from one baton to the next across the entire range of the instrument and with further idiosyncratic variation from one instrument to another. This makes the carillon an ideal candidate for haptic simulation. The application of synthesized force-feedback based on an analysis of forces operating in a typical carillon mechanism offers a blueprint for the design of an electronic practice clavier and with it the solution to a problem that has vexed carillonists for centuries, namely the inability to rehearse repertoire in private. This paper will focus on design and implementation of a haptic carillon clavier derived from an analysis of the Australian National Carillon in Canberra.

Metris: a game environment for music performance

Metris is a version of the Tetris game that uses a players musical response to control game performance. The game is driven by two factors: traditional game design and the players individual sense of music and sound. Metris uses tuning principles to determine relationships between pitch and the timbre of the sounds produced. These relationships are represented as bells synchronised with significant events in the game. Key elements of the game design control a musical environment based on just intonation tuning. This presents a scenario where the game design is enhanced by a users sense of sound and music. Conventional art music is subverted by responses to simple design elements in a popular game.

Haptic Carillon: A Computationally Enhanced Mechanical Performing Instrument

This paper describes the development of a haptic device for emulating the sonic and haptic dynamics of a carillon, specifically the National Carillon in Canberra, Australia. The carillon is one of only a few instruments that elicit a sophisticated haptic response from the amateur and professional player alike. Force-feedback varies widely across the range of the instrument and developing an intuition for the heaviness of different bells is a critical part of carillon pedagogy. Unfortunately, rehearsal time available to individual carillonneurs is limited by competition from other carillonneurs and environmental factors like civic noise limits and carillon maintenance schedules. Rehearsal instruments do exist but they do not accurately display the haptic dynamics of the real carillon. Our device couples the notions of entertainment and cultural computing; while musical instruments are now regularly digitised for purposes of entertainment the haptic carillon is motivated by an awareness of the musicianship of carillonneurs and the public cultural space they inhabit with their instrument.