CubeHarmonic: New Musical Interface with a Magnetic Motion Tracking

CubeHarmonicis a new musical interface with the magnetic 3D motion tracking system IM3D. This system precisely tracks positions of tiny, wireless, battery-less, and identifiable markers (LC coils) in real time. The CubeHarmonicis a musical application of the Rubik’s cube, with notes on each little piece. Scrambling the cube, we get different chords and chord sequences. Positions of the pieces which contain LC coils are detected through IM3D, and transmitted to the computer to recognize the status of the Rubik’s cube, that plays sounds. The central position of the cube is also measured by the LC coils located into the corners of Rubik’s cube, and, depending on the position, we can manipulate overall loudness and pitch changes, as in thereminplaying. This new instrument, whose first idea comes from mathematical theory of music, can be used as a teaching tool both for math (group theory) and music (music theory, mathematical music theory), as well as a composition device, a new instrument for avant-garde performances, and a recreational tool.

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Publication

International

• Mannnone Maria, Eri Kitamura, Jiawei Huang, Ryo Sugawara, Yoshifumi Kitamura, Cubeharmonic: A New Interface from a Magnetic 3D Motion Tracking System to Music Performance, Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, page.350-351, June 2018, [link]
• Maria Mannone, Eri Kitamura, Jiawei Huang, Ryo Sugawara, Pascal Chiu, and Yoshifumi Kitamura. 2019. CubeHarmonic: a new musical instrument based on Rubik’s cube with embedded motion sensor. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2019 Posters (SIGGRAPH ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, Article 53, 1–2. [link]