Tobias Großhauser

ETH Zurich | ETH Zürich · Department Information Technology and Electrical Engineering

MDPI Applied Sciences: Special Issue on Modelling, Simulation and Data Analysis in Acoustical Problems All papers can be downloaded free by clicking through the link in the contents list.

This study explores violinists’ judgments of instrument quality and the adaptation of the players’ musical performances to vibrotactile feedback. Actuators and sensors were integrated into an acoustic violin to create six vibration conditions for an experiment with eight participants. It was shown that the vibration conditions affected the players’...

In this study, the influence of piano key vibration levels on players’ personal judgment of the instrument quality and on the dynamics and timing of the players’ performance of a music piece excerpt is examined. In an experiment four vibration levels were presented to eleven pianists playing on a digital grand piano with grand piano-like key action...

Recent studies suggest that vibration of piano keys affect the perceived quality of the instrument, as well as the dynamic control and timing in piano playing. However, the time signals of piano key vibrations and its physical properties have not been analyzed and compared to the threshold of vibration sensation in a real-life playing situation yet...

This paper evaluates a miniature accelerometer to measure vi- brations at the points where the violinist is in contact with the violin. The violinist perceives these vibrations as vibrotactile feedback, which plays an important role for the quality percep- tion and the precise control of the instrument. The performance of the accelerometer is compa...

Playing style, technique and touch quality are essential for musical expression in piano playing. From a mechanical point of view, this is mainly influenced by finger pressing force, finger position and finger contact area size. To measure these quantities, we introduce and evaluate a new sensor setup suited for the in-depth investigation of the pi...

Several technologies to measure lip pressure during brass instrument playing have already been developed as prototypes. This paper presents many technological improvements of previous methods and its optimization to use this technique as " easy to handle " tool in the classroom. It also offers new options for performance science studies gathering m...

Sensor technologies for musical instruments enable musicians to capture playing parameters while playing and augment their instruments for enhanced musical expression. A further step into this direction is the following optical, contact free bowing sensing technique for string instruments. In string instrument playing, the combination of bowing spe...

We present a study on the effect of auditory and vibrotac-tile cues in a finger-pressing task. During a training phase subjects learned three target forces, and had to reproduce them during an experiment, under different feedback con-ditions. Results show that audio-tactile augmentation al-lowed subjects to achieve memorized target forces with impr...

A pilot experiment is presented which investigates the role of auditory and vibrotactile feedback in reaching target pressing-forces with the finger. Relying on kinesthetic memory as in musical practice, the target forces were learned in advance during a training phase. First results show that audio-tactile augmentation allowed subjects to achieve...

In this article, we present a wearable sensor setup for motion and pressure capturing and real-time sonification of these parameters. The sensor setup is modular and adapted to the specific needs of dancers and dance teachers. Closed-loop interactive sonification in these scenarios conveys information by using nonspeech sound in real time. It addre...

In this paper we present BRIX, a novel modular hardware prototyping platform for applications in mobile, wearable and stationary sensing, data streaming and feedback. The system consists of three different types of compact stack-able modules, which can adapt to various applications and scenarios. The core of BRIX is a base module that contains basi...

Finger force, acceleration and position are fundamental in playing music instruments. Measuring these parameters is a technical challenge and precise position and acceleration measurement of single fingers is particularly demanding. We present a sensor setup for multi modal measurements of force, position and acceleration in piano playing. We captu...

Pressure, motion, gesture and the coordination of all these pa-rameters is an important task in musical instrument playing, ex-ercising and teaching. New sensing and feedback technologies provide many possibilities to support the teacher and the student in the complex learning scenarios. In this paper we show with some practical examples the applic...

The paper presents a multi-modal approach to tightly close the in-teraction loop between a human user and any tool in operation. Every activity of a human being generates multi-modal feedback, more or less related to the eyes (visual), the skin (sensory), the nose (olfactory) and the ears (auditive). Here we show the useful augmentation or complete...

Wearable sensing technologies give the user the possibility of on-site and real-time measurements, analysis and feedback of move-ments and postures in everyday behavior, learning and training sit-uations. There are many established motion capturing technolo-gies to support complex movements, but less mobile and wearable systems. One of the key disa...

In this paper, we present a prototype of a spatially resolved force sensing floor surface. The force sensors are based on conductive paper and grouped into modules called tacTiles. Due to the cheap and widely available materials used for tacTiles, the approach is suitable as a low-cost alternative for spatially resolved tactile sensing. The necessa...

This paper presents integrated vibrotactiles, a novel interface for movement and posture tuition that provides real-time feedback in a tactile form by means of interactive haptic feedback, thereby conveying information neither acoustically nor visually and it is a promising feedback means for movements in 3D-space. In this paper we demonstrate hapt...

cote interne IRCAM: Grosshauser08a

The described project is a new approach to use highly sensitive low force pressure sensor matrices for malposition, cramping and tension of hands and fingers, gesture and keystroke analysis and for new musical expression. In the latter, sensors are used as additional touch sensitive switches and keys. In pedagogical issues, new ways of technology e...

This article describes the ?Sound and Gesture Lab?, a prototype application developed by Ircam in the context of the European project ?I-Maestro?. This project is focused on technology enhanced music pedagogy, and is more specifically devoted to string instruments teaching.

Methods, technics and expression in playing and teaching musical instruments means a lot of analysing of gesture, posture, pressure and movement of several parts of the human body. For many of these parameters, the everyday use Sensor System provides a possibility to record and show most of the significant Data in real time. This new possibilities...

The Idea of the following project is a combination of music, interactive parts in audio and score, sensor data and a LINUX based e-learning envirenment like moodle. As it is more and more expensive for many people to get good and advanced teaching in music, e-learning and online support gets more and more important. Also objective data of useful se...

This paper presents the sonified music stand, a novel interface for musicians that provides real-time feedback for professional musicians in an auditory form by means of interactive sonification. Sonifications convey information by using non-speech sound and are a promising means for musicians since they (a) leave the visual sense unoccupied, (b) a...

In this paper we present a prototype of a spatially resolved tactile surface that can serve as an 'artificial skin' to extend the perceptual capabilities of furniture or other artifacts in environments such as the floor or wall. The surface material is based on paper and flexible circuit board material, so that tacTiles – elements of this type – ca...

Pressure, motion, and gesture are important parameters in musical instrument playing. Pressure sensing allows to in-terpret complex hidden forces, which appear during playing a musical instrument. The combination of our new sensor setup with pattern recognition techniques like the lately de-veloped ordered means models allows fast and precise recog...