soniCube: A New Instrument for Exploring Timbre

In an attempt to learn about the abstraction of timbre, soniCube was developed to allow a user to explore a programmed timbre-space.

The majority of instruments commonly used allow musicians to manipulate three parameters of a note: volume, pitch and sustain. Many other qualities of sound remain constant. In particular, the timbre of most instruments seldom differs, and is limited by physical constraints. In order to allow for timbre to be explored in an instrument, we designed the soniCube, which maps exploration in a physical space to variation in the timbre space. The interaction of the soniCube emphasizes changing timbre expressively, while allowing for other manipulations common to instruments. The soniCube is played with two hands while moving around in an X,Y plane. These two interactions allow control of the onset and pitch played, as well as a wide range of timbres to be expressed in one instrument. Homepage: http://www.stanford.edu/~evanlee/sonicube.pdf Registrar: sonicube.myopenid.com