Gestural coherence and musical interaction design

Music is a performing art and part of the quality of the musical experience comes from the relationship between the player´s physical technique and the sound that is produced. A player can feel this intimately. A listener can appreciate this connection visually (and viscerally) whether in a live concert or in the mind´s eye while listening to a recorded performance. Our rich tradition of musical instruments has created a repertoire of gestures (bowing, blowing, banging, etc.) that are closely tied to familiar sounds. What is it that makes instruments comfortable to play? How can we choose appropriate performing gestures for new electronic instruments? The author approaches these questions from three different perspectives: 1) an attempt to define some useful dimensions of gesture; 2) an analysis of the production of musical tones based on a general state transition model; and 3) the notion of “gestural coherence”, the correspondence between action and sound