Irene Meiying Cheung Ruiz
Master Thesis Student
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Supervisor: Florian Heller
Title: "Design and Evaluation of an Augmented Flute for Beginners"
Abstract:
Learning to play the transverse flute is not an easy task, at least not for everyone.
Since the flute is not a resonator on its own, the player must provide a steady
focused stream of air that will cause the flute to resonate and therefore produce
sound. In order to achieve this, the player has to be aware of the embouchure position
to generate an adequate air jet. For a beginner, this can be a difficult task due
to the lack of visual cues or indicators of the air jet and lips position. This study
attempts to address this problem by presenting an augmented flute that can make
the gestures related to the embouchure visible and measurable. The augmented
flute shows information about the area covered by the lower lip, estimates the lip
hole shape based on noise analysis, and it shows graphically the air jet direction.
Additionally, the augmented flute provides directional and continuous feedback
in real time, based on data acquired by experienced flutists. This work conducted
three user studies. The first one was conducted with experienced flutists in order to
collect comments and data. The second and third user study were oriented towards
the application usability for beginners. While in the second study, the application
gave a binary feedback, the subsequent version provided continuous feedback to
the player. Finally, after comparing both versions, we found that the second version
of the augmented flute application was more informative for the beginner.
The augmented flute was designed with low cost hardware and can be expanded
for further pedagogical and learning purposes or as musical interface.
Publications
- Florian Heller, Irene Meiying Cheung Ruiz and Jan Borchers. An Augmented Flute for Beginners. In NIME '17: Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2017.
- Irene M. Cheung R.. Design and Evaluation of an Augmented Flute for Beginners. Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, September 2015.