Harnessing ancillary microgestures in piano technique: implementing microgestural control into an expressive keyboard-based hyper-instrument

... This chapter looks at the evaluation of Reach, an augmented keyboard instrument that provides control over the sound modulation of a live piano feed. The chapter builds upon existing research previously presented at the Innovation in Music conference that took place in London, September 2017 (Granieri et al., 2019). The comparative user testing discussed here investigates if and to what extent invasiveness in Digital and Augmented Musical Instruments (#MIs) affected the ability of pianists to improvise at a first encounter with the instrument freely. ...

... This point was investigated mainly throughout the interview process and ties back to the freedom of playing. The aural invasiveness aspect of this exploration followed the results of the initial user testing, as described in Granieri et al. (2019) . Classical pianists struggle more with the aural elements of the system than the gestural ones. ...

... The Reach system was used to conduct four case studies with creative practitioners of different musical background (Granieri et al. 2019). The creative practitioners, a composer and two songwriters, through collaborative design workshops helped define the current state of the Reach system. ...