Stratus is an instrument that generates melodies, rhythms and visuals to give users a unique multisensory music making experience. The main focus of the project was to create a compelling user interface both physically and digitally, as well as developing unique sound design and instrument interactions.
There are many areas in which designs optimised for both audio and visual elements have a lot of potential. Unfortunately, this is often overlooked as designs that would benefit from both audio and visual elements tend to either lean towards one or the other rather than utilising interactions with both senses.
When researching for this project I gathered insights in ways sound can be interpreted from person to person. An individual’s backgroundand previous experiences impact how they view sound, so by gathering this information from people, I had a great foundation to build the visual side of my design on.
The instrument UI design was based around giving people with little music making experience the most intuitive set of controls to work with as well as creating memorable icons that related to the generated audio.
The instrument was designed within Max and was inspired by generative music making techniques like the use of quantising random pitches to scales and sequencers that generate infinite rhythms. The physical interface is a MIDI controller that sends MIDI signals to parameters within Max.
The visuals that the instrument generates were also developed within Max using Jitter. This allows the visuals to have direct communication with the audio creating a fluent audio/visual relationship that gives users instantaneous visual feedback as they change the parameters of the instrument.
The final design is made up of the physical instrument interface and the digital generative visuals. the instrument can generate up to three melodies simultaneously as well as a rhythmic beat. Each melody can be saved as a loop and can have effects and a filter applied to it to create a wide variety of sounds. The instrument is designed in a way so that no matter what the controls are set to, it will always produce melodies that are in key with one another and that sound musical.
