Tactility in instruments
Back in the 1990’s when I lived in Montreal I practiced guitar daily, sometimes for hours but usually for at least two hours. I’m working on getting back into that habit because it was so rewarding in ways I had not imagined at the time.
During today’s morning guitar warmup I started thinking about how tactile the guitar is and what happens when you lose some of that tactility or haptic feedback that comes with an instrument that resonates and indicates how it’s being played.
The warmup exercise is easy and can be done on any instrument but it’s particularly great on the guitar. I have to credit my former mentor and guitar instructor, Bill Coon for this exercise. The idea is to focus on your sound and your body as you play. Set a metronome to 80 bpm and play whole notes. Try to play exactly on the beat and breath regularly. Once you are comfortable play up and down the instrument’s range inclining and declining by one semitone. First play in quarter notes, then eighths, then 8th note triplets, 16th notes. I’ll post a quick video of me playing the exercise soon, it’s sounds much more complicated when written. An aside: maybe using the English language to describe a musical concept isn’t an appropriate channel. Perhaps we can talk about how Alan Kay, proposed that we learn using the most appropriate channel as his analysis of how to play tennis illustrated. See this video for reference. There’s something that happens when you’re playing an instrument that binds the player and the instrument. As I play I notice that the string vibrates under my finger tips and give me a subtle indication of the timbre and quality of the sound through my body.
While I was in LA for the Ableton Loop conference in November 2018, I tried out a new folding guitar called the Jammy. I wasn’t thrilled by the name of it but I was excited and ready to love it but was quickly disappointed on playing it.
Here’s why, it uses two sets of strings, one for the neck and another for the strumming or picking hand. These detached strings was so disorienting for me that I took a double take, tried it again but failed at playing the most basic scale. Playing the Jammy, travel guitar made it so difficult to feel where you are on the neck and synchronizing both hands. The entire sensation of playing a tactile instrument was completely lost.
It seems like such a basic requirement for an instrument but so many instruments are launched that take away this tactility. My thought is that the concept testing phase of these products are not explored enough. Perhaps these products are driven by technology or engineer driven teams and they human-centred design process is overlooked. How do position the value of interaction design into the instrument creating industry?
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