The plethora of electronic drum controllers on the market today are designed for “location-oriented” striking techniques, resulting in an interaction paradigm for finger drumming that is increasingly “controllerist.” Interfaces such as these use the controller in the manner of a musical instrument rather than a simple mixer. The minority of controllers that allow hand-drumming techniques also either conform to region-based triggering design, or, in a trade-off for expressivity, skip out on hardware connectivity options that are vital to the context of the electronic rhythm producer. This article describes the design and implementation of HandSolo, a real-time, timbre-classification drum controller that allows the use of natural hand-drumming strokes, while offering the same end-goal functionality that drum controller users have come to familiarize themselves with over the past decade.

The level of engagement of a musician performing on an instrument is related to the degree of satisfaction derived from that activity. With our work, we aim to assist musicians performing live on a new musical instrument, Network of Interactive Sonic Agents (NOISA), by helping them maintain or increase their level of engagement with the activity. The NOISA system can learn from performers through observation and estimate their engagement level in real time. The new response module, which includes new sound design, comparison of gestures, and audio-analysis features, can also decide what action to take, and when to implement it, to help the performer recover from lowering engagement levels. We report on a formative user study that evaluates the impact of this response module.

In this article, we summarize recent research examining concatenative synthesis and its application and relevance in the composition and production of styles of electronic dance music. We introduce the conceptual underpinnings of concatenative synthesis and describe key works and systematic approaches in the literature. Our system, RhythmCAT, is proposed as a user-friendly system for generating rhythmic loops that model the timbre and rhythm of an initial target loop. The architecture of the system is explained, and an extensive evaluation of the system's performance and user response is discussed based on our results.

Computer music research realizes a vision of performance by means of computational expression, linking body and space to sound and imagery through eclectic forms of sensing and interaction. This vision could dramatically influence computer science education, simultaneously modernizing the field and drawing in diverse new participants. In this article, we describe our work creating an interactive computer music toolkit for youth called BlockyTalky. This toolkit enables users to create networks of sensing devices and synthesizers, and to program the musical and interactive behaviors of these devices. We also describe our work with two middle-school teachers to codesign and deploy a curriculum for 11- to 13-year-old students. We draw on work with these students to evidence how computer music can support learning about computer science concepts and change students' perceptions of computing. We conclude by outlining some remaining questions around how computer music and computer science may best be linked to provide transformative educational experiences.