Daisyphone: the design and impact of a novel environment for remote group music improvisation

Reviewer: Pierre Jouvelot

Music practice is often seen as a formal activity, requiring a long learning period to acquire both conceptual and instrumental skills. With the advent of new technologies that lower this access barrier, it is possible to envision a more common way of practicing music, reinventing the pervasive use of music that existed in the past. The Daisyphone project introduces a new collaborative computer interface that enables groups of musicians, be they novices or advanced players, to collectively improvise loops of musical tunes. After a short presentation of existing tools for music composition and improvisation, the three main design criteria for Daisyphone-namely easy interaction with looping music, remote collaboration, and support for formulation of musical ideas-are discussed. Music representation in Daisyphone uses the flower metaphor; each petal is a row of dots that abstract notes of increasing pitches, while time sequencing is denoted by a simple rotating arm. Users, who while listening almost synchronously to the music loop, can activate the various notes, or add written comments on the screen, share this interface over the network. Two experiments were performed, with school children aged 16 and post-graduate students; they show that this approach has potential, although more work is required to improve focus and usability. This easy-to-read paper could be useful to computer music researchers interested in new and attractive ways of enabling group music practice, particularly with an eye toward improvisation. Online Computing Reviews Service