CongAIR: A ubiquitous digital musical instrument prototype based on percussive congas

Abstract

In recent years, it is possible to observe the proliferation of new digital musical instruments (DMI) with different performances and purposes through low-cost technologies through digital signal processing, intensifying the search for solutions, models and actions for the presentation of electronic music. Thus, the possibility of establishing the practice of compositions and instrumentation with combinations of sound synthesis interfaces, gestures and other sensors with possible incorporation into computers. This work presents a new version of the prototype of a digital musical instrument for percussion in congas called CongAr. The CongAr uses two distance sensors representing the congas and an arduino prototype, that is, at each distance captured by the sensor it becomes a musical drum beat. For this, CongAr has an information capture manager for the multiple arduino. CongAr is a distributed performative model, which allows actions between several participants being able to play together allowing the transmission of information in serial mode (connected to the manager), local or global communication network in sound or MIDI form. In this version, CongAr features visual improvements in sensor handling and accuracy. Tests were carried out with Musicians and non-musicians from a qualitative questionnaire presenting satisfactory results of usability, gestural awareness and visual communication.