Learning Musical Instrument Skills Through Interactive Sonification

Interactive visualisation methods have been used to understand realtime acoustic analysis for the purpose of learning musical skills. However, interactive sonification has not often been considered, perhaps because it is assumed the musician cannot concentrate simultaneously on two sounds – their instrument’s sound, and the sonified information. However, whilst some finesse is required in designing sonification algorithms so that they interact with the musician’s sound in a controlled manner, there possibly are particular advantages to adopting the sonification approach. This research reports on a suite of interactive sonification algorithms for communicating real-time acoustic analysis results to singers and instrumentalists.