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A master's thesis from Aalborg University
Book cover


Motorique - Control of Tempo and Frequency for Modular Synthesizers through Modulation of Rotational Motor Wheel Speed: Prototyping of a Eurorack Module for Investigation into Motor Speed as a Representation of Musical Tempo and Frequency

Translated title

Motorique - Control of Tempo and Frequency for Modular Synthesizers through Modulation of Rotational Motor Wheel Speed

Term

4. Term

Publication year

2018

Submitted on

Pages

70

Abstract

In this thesis, the design, implementation and evaluation of a digital musical interface (DMI), specifically for the Eurorack modular synthesizer format, is described in addition to a review of different options for evaluating DMIs, related devices and musical context. Motorique is a DMI that allows motor speed control of tempo and frequency. The relationship between tempo, frequency and motor speed is explored, in musical terms, in order to ascertain whether this is a novel or interesting form of interaction. Its design is heavily influenced by musical playback devices with rotating surfaces such as turntables and tape machines. With many electronic musicians having prior experience with these types of devices, the need for further experimentation with tempo modulation as a form of musical expression in electronic and more specifically dance music is discussed. Usability Testing and video-cued recall is used to obtain both quantitative and qualitative data (mixed method) during evaluation.