This paper outlines the methodological and theoretical considerations encountered in the practice-based research of a performer-developer. Considering the relevance of self-reflective and autoethnographic methods for practice-based, creative-production research projects, the relationship between development and use of technological artefacts for musical performance is discussed with reference to relevant theory.

Practice-based research in NIME is rooted in the practices of design and musical performance. Perspectives from HCI on the relationship between design and research, examining the role of questions or design problems in research, and considering the wickedness of the task help us frame and understand our work.

This article advocates for a dialogue about research traditions and paradigms within the community around New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). Although the research community collectively values interdisciplinarity, the author argues that we have not done enough to acknowledge and account for the inevitable epistemological differences that emerge with disciplinary diversity. Over time, NIME has seen a rise in the proportion of technical reporting and a concomitant decline in practice-based research, which historically played a more central role. Exploration and explication of the values, assumptions, and expectations that circumscribe legitimacy in practice-based research are needed in order to maintain and advocate for its relevance.

The author offers a pair of proposals for possible practice-led tactics for live electronic music research, both aimed at enhancing musical communication within the sub-discipline and based on activities that the author takes to be informally present in much of the conduct of musicians. By way of background, he first explains why improving musical communication is important in terms of its potential benefit to our disciplinary coherence and our collective ability to communicate fruitfully with each other and with researchers in allied disciplines.

This paper considers the relationship between design, practice and research in the area of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). The author argues that NIME practitioner-researchers should embrace the instability and dynamism inherent in digital musical interactions in order to explore and document the evolving processes of musical expression.

The Hypertension Singing Bowl was shaped from a year of the author’s blood pressure readings, and 3D printed in stainless steel so it would ring. This digitally fabricated singing bowl is an “ultimate particular” that establishes the design space of Acoustic Sonifications. This paper presents early experiments with Acoustic Sonification and analyses them using an Annotated Portfolio to identify interaction, perception, aesthetics and contemplation as important axes of the domain. This illustrates how Annotated Portfolios could also be used to analyse New Interfaces for Musical Expression.

The practice of gestural electronic music performance provides a valid context for artistic or practice-based investigations in the field of ’NIME.’ To this end, the material and conceptual conditions for the development of performance pieces using gestural actions need to be explored. The use of digital musical instruments and concepts for the expressive performance with digital sounds leads to questions of perception—by the musician and by the audience—of movements and actions, the body, the instruments, and of their affordances. When considering this performance mode as a topic for investigation, it becomes evident that in order to be based on practice, research in this field needs a definition and differentiation that helps to identify the specific perspectives that are only made possible through application in an actual artistic practice.