Nomis is a musical instrument created with the aim of making loop based music more expressive and transparent through gesture and light.
Midi sounds are selected, played, and looped, being passed across the instrument as a way of illustrating how melodies are created and how they fit into a larger composition. Midi sounds are selected and displayed through the first light tower, each being represented by a different color.
Those sounds are then available to be performed and displayed with the polyphonic octagonal interface in the middle. These performances are stored and looped by spinning the whole octagonal interface. The loops are then displayed through the last tower where they each can individually be turned off and on again to create a dynamic composition from the loops created live.
The Ondes Martenot was invented in 1920’s, but is undergoing a revival in the hands of Suzanne Farrin.
Feedback Synth is a proof-of-concept instrument which aims to control the frequency of acoustic feedback with a MIDI keyboard.
The instrument consists of small speaker and microphone, enclosed in polycarbonate box, that create acoustic feedback loop. The speaker is mounted on a pan/tilt head, allowing for 180 degrees movement in two planes. Movement of the head is controlled by dedicated software.
GePS is a Gesture-based Performance System, created by Cedric Spindler & Frederic Robinson.
Martin Marier’s Sponge is a piece of foam, equipped with sensors (accelerometers and force sensing resistors) which can detect when it is squeezed, twisted or shaken.
Sensor data is then sent wirelessly (XBee protocol) to a computer to control sound synthesis and processing.
Judging
Judging the 20 semi-finalists are:
- DJ Hurricane, a producer and rapper who is best known for his work with the Beastie Boys;
- Graham Marsh, a Grammy award-winning producer, mixer and engineer who has worked with Ludacris, Bruno Mars and CeeLo Green; and
- Joe Paradiso, a physicist who designs electronic music synthesizers and directs the MIT Media Lab’s Responsive Environments Group.
The Guthman Competition will be held February 19 and 20 at Georgia Tech, Atlanta. The finals will be held February 20 from 7:00 – 9:00 pm on campus and are free and open to the public.
Which of these 20 new instruments do you think deserves to be recognized as this year’s ‘best new idea in musical instrument design, engineering and musicianship’? Leave a comment and let us know what you think!
I like the ndial 🙂 looks very interesting 🙂 Are there more infos avaible?
I like it A LOT !
Me too! Just add patch buttons to keep sample sets in, and add bpm display and I’ll buy two now!
Yeah I love it really suits my music. I can’t find it anywhere on google I’m guessing it’s not in mass production yet
Very interesting idea. Do you guys know if there is something similar to this in M4L for example? Shouldnt be too complex to recreate in software, play with a random buffer of a sample in a step sequencer setting.
Ipad seems perfect for the ndial. instabuy.
I like the tine organ and the o-bow.
Tine organ – that is an amazing little instrument! Not that the others aren’t, but that one really speaks to me.
liking a lot of these.
Most of the these nominees are only usable or even interesting to a few people. But I’d give the prize to Judy Pizza’s Dulsitar; for craftsmanship, and musicality (potential).
What the hell kind of 1970’s space command center are those people sitting in?! So cool !
I want that Tine organ!
Yaybahar for sure. That thing is awesome.
I would love to see DJTechTools sell the NIdial someday.. I would buy it in a heart beat.
Yaybahar!!
YAYBAHAR! no electricity needed for this firepit camping trip music festival
yaybahar could EASILY be the hottest new mandatory item to have in a dwelling or have to take on trips and any event really.
the o-bow is a very cool and expressive controller.
the Yaybahar or Turner Winch seem to be the most practical
the yaybahar is just monumental
Somehow I miss here Myriam Bleau’s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeXebgHkd5g
I want a Yaybahar!!
The o bow is brilliant, the organ too.
I think the definition of ‘musical instrument’ needs to exclude anything that can’t actually make music. 🙂 As to my top choice, despite my love for the electronics I’m going with the Dulsitar. For a controller, though, the O-Bow is pretty darn clever — if you can get the technique down. I think the Dualo Du-Touch has a lot of potential and I quite liked the Cantor Digitalis. 🙂
Who gets to be the ‘music police’ that decides what is or isn’t music?
A lot of the music I listen to (dark ambient, classical electronic music, Berlin School) probably wouldn’t be recognized as ‘music’ by mainstream listeners!
Non of them, all sounds horrible…
…Then there’s the NIME conference each year which produces a lot of useful knowledge for other new instrument makers/enthusiasts/innovators rather than relegating their hard work to a competition… http://www.nime.org/archives/
I’m both thrilled at the creativity on display here, and dismayed at the silly idea of competition between these ideas. Hey musicians, competition is for sports!
Music is for collaboration.. the ideal would be a jam between all these instruments, showing their strengths in the context of co-creation.
My utterly subjective impression is that the Yaybahar speaks to me most as a totally original acoustic design, and in the electronic world the o-bow looks really impressive just on that short clip.. it would be even better integrated into a whole instrument.. seems ideal for Artiphon’s Instrument 1 actually.
Have some fun: play all videos on each page simultaneously.
If I was allowed to vote I would vote for Tine organ or Yaybahar. O-Bow and Dulsitar also look interesting, but in my opinion most on this top 20 actually are rather performance midi controllers controlling computing devices, which generate sound signals via probably already known digital algorithms and not that much musical instruments emitting physical sound waves – that’s all about terminology – what we call a musical instrument (software/hardware), of course
Yaybahar is the super organ
I’m with yaybahar it’s the winner
Many interesting ideas here, but the only ones that I thought were a) original and b) produced real music were Nomis, the Dulsitar, and the Tine Organ. The o-bow looked neat, but it seemed more like *part* of an instrument. The multi-person “choir” might have potential. The Turner Winch looked like it had limited potential for musical usefulness – but it looked like one helluva lot of fun, too.
They all sound amazing but i prefer the Yaybahar and Nomis for their musical use.
The yaybahar is great! An entirely NEW sonic world is opened WITHOUT the use of electricity.
Pure genius if you ask me. When shal we know the outcome of the competition?
THANKS and greetings from Italy