Virtual Symphony
Zhimin Ren (left) and Qi Mo (right) play Virtual Symphony
J. Carlyle Sitterson Hall
Wednesday, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public
Principal Investigator:
Ming C. Lin, Beverly W. Long Distinguished Professor, Computer Science, UNC
Project Team:
Zhimin Ren, UNC Computer Science Graduate Student
Maggie Zhou, UNC Computer Science Undergraduate Student
Jason Coposky, RENCI
Nikunj Raghuvanshi, Microsoft Research
Project Description:
We introduce Virtual Symphony, a touch-enabled virtual instrument system that can be used to emulate various musical instruments, including xylophone, drums, Chinese gong, keyboards, and others in percussion family. A multi-touch table developed by RENCI is used as the input device for the users to play the virtual instruments. It allows the users to play the virtual instrument using their hands in an intuitive way as they typically would with the real musical instruments. This system also facilitates both bimanual and collaborative playing among multiple performers.
The musical sound created by this system is automatically synthesized based on the user's performance, which is captured by the multi-touch table and used to drive a physics-based sound synthesis system. Virtual Symphony interactively generates musical sound based on the physical interaction between the user and the musical instruments. It models the instruments' vibration due to impacts and contacts, mimicking the sound generation process in nature, thus automatically creating harmonic tones as the user plays the chosen virtual instrument. But, this system offers additional benefits: it allows the user to change the materials of the instrument (e.g. from metalic keys to wooden keys), the appearance, and the size of the instruments. Thereby, it is also possible to "imagine and create" new musical instruments using this system as well.
Wednesday, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public
Principal Investigator:
Ming C. Lin, Beverly W. Long Distinguished Professor, Computer Science, UNC
Project Team:
Zhimin Ren, UNC Computer Science Graduate Student
Maggie Zhou, UNC Computer Science Undergraduate Student
Jason Coposky, RENCI
Nikunj Raghuvanshi, Microsoft Research
Project Description:
We introduce Virtual Symphony, a touch-enabled virtual instrument system that can be used to emulate various musical instruments, including xylophone, drums, Chinese gong, keyboards, and others in percussion family. A multi-touch table developed by RENCI is used as the input device for the users to play the virtual instruments. It allows the users to play the virtual instrument using their hands in an intuitive way as they typically would with the real musical instruments. This system also facilitates both bimanual and collaborative playing among multiple performers.
The musical sound created by this system is automatically synthesized based on the user's performance, which is captured by the multi-touch table and used to drive a physics-based sound synthesis system. Virtual Symphony interactively generates musical sound based on the physical interaction between the user and the musical instruments. It models the instruments' vibration due to impacts and contacts, mimicking the sound generation process in nature, thus automatically creating harmonic tones as the user plays the chosen virtual instrument. But, this system offers additional benefits: it allows the user to change the materials of the instrument (e.g. from metalic keys to wooden keys), the appearance, and the size of the instruments. Thereby, it is also possible to "imagine and create" new musical instruments using this system as well.
