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Helical Keyboard

Michael Cohen,
Assistant Professor, Human Interface Laboratory

Inspired by the cyclical nature of octaves and helical structure of a scale, we prepared a normal (rectangular) model of a piano-style keyboard (in Mathematica), which was then geometrically warped into a left-handed helical configuration, one octave/revolution, so that pitch corresponds to height. The model was imported (via dxf file format) into (Open Inventor/)VRML, where it can be animated by MIDI events, realtime or sequenced, which stream is both synthesized and spatialized by a spatial sound backend, so that the sound of the respective notes is directionalized with respect to sinks, avatars of the human user, by default in the tube of the helix.


www@u-aizu.ac.jp
October 1997