Batebit Controller: Popularizing Digital Musical Instruments Development Process
This work addresses the challenge of popularizing DMI development for beginners, though it is incremental in its approach.
The paper tackles the problem of making digital musical instrument (DMI) development accessible to beginners by introducing a physical kit and software that reduce cognitive load and cost, aiming to strengthen the musical expression community.
In this paper, we present an ongoing research project related to popularizing the mindset of building new digital musical instruments. We developed a physical kit and software intended to provide beginner users with the first grasp on the development process of a digital musical instrument. We expect that, by using the kit and the software, the users could experiment in a short period the various steps in developing a DMI such as physical structure, electronics, programming, mapping, and sound design. Our approach to popularizing the DMI development process is twofold: reducing the cognitive load for beginners by encapsulating technical details and lowering the costs of the kit by using simple components and open-source software. In the end, we expect that by increasing the interest of beginners in the building process of digital musical instruments, we could make the community of new interfaces for musical expression stronger.