I always wanted to be able to jam with my best friends who were not musicians (this was way before 'Band Hero'!). I came up with the idea to set up a system where everybody can make danceable music together.
Interactive music experiments were a set of experiments questioning the role of a real musician in modern ‘live electronic music’ concept. The setup consisted of several midi devices that controled different parts of the composed piece. All the devices are connected to a computer from which the piece was played. The input from the users were quantized so that the user wouldn’t be able to make timing errors. When there are no non-musical timing errors, most of the errors that the users might make could also be considered as arrangement decisions.
The CDMIDI controller let the user to play an improvised solo with a soft synth connected to it. The user only needed to decide if they wanted to go up or down in the melody since every note would be quantized to the scale of the song. This brought up the question, “does someone have to be a musician to play a melodic solo?”
In the video “Interactive Music Experiments 1″ musicians jam with the setup, in Interactive Music Experiments 2″ you can enjoy the fantastic jam of a non-musician group.
