Musink: composing music through augmented drawing

Tsandilas, T., Letondal, C., and Mackay, W. E. 2009. Musink: composing music through augmented drawing. In Proceedings of the 27th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Boston, MA, USA, April 04 - 09, 2009). CHI '09. ACM, New York, NY, 819-828.

Abstract: We focus on the creative use of paper in the music composition process, particularly the interaction between paper and end-user programming. When expressing musical ideas, composers draw in a precise way, not just sketch. Working in close collaboration with composers, we designed Musink to provide them with a smooth transition between paper drawings and OpenMusic, a flexible music composition tool. Musink's built-in recognizers handle common needs, such as scoping and annotation. Users can also define new gestures and associate them with their own or predefined software functions. Musink supports semi-structured, delayed interpretation and serves as a customizable gesture browser, giving composers significant freedom to create their own, individualized composition languages and to experiment with music, on-paper and on-line.