The Tangible In Music

In the age of digital music it seems striking that so many of us still want to produce music concretely with our bodies, through the movement of our limbs, lungs and fingers, in contact with those materials and objects which are capable of producing sounds. The huge sales figures of musical instruments in the global market, and the amount of time and effort people of all ages invest in mastering the tools of music, make it clear that playing musical instruments is an important phenomenon in human life. By combining the findings made in music psychology and performative ethnomusicology, Marko Aho shows how playing a musical instrument, and the pleasure musicians get from it, emerges from an intimate dialogue between the personally felt body and the sounding instrument. An introduction to the general aspects of the tactile resources of musical instruments, musical style and the musician is followed by an analysis of the learning process of the regional kantele style of the Perho river valley in Finnish Central Ostrobothnia.

In the age of digital music it seems striking that so many of us still want to produce music concretely with our bodies, through the movement of our limbs, lungs and fingers, in contact with those materials and objects which are capable of producing sounds. The huge sales figures of musical instruments in the global market, and the amount of time and effort people of all ages invest in mastering the tools of music, make it clear that playing musical instruments is an important phenomenon in human life. By combining the findings made in music psychology and performative ethnomusicology, Marko Aho shows how playing a musical instrument, and the pleasure musicians get from it, emerges from an intimate dialogue between the personally felt body and the sounding instrument. An introduction to the general aspects of the tactile resources of musical instruments, musical style and the musician is followed by an analysis of the learning process of the regional kantele style of the Perho river valley in Finnish Central Ostrobothnia.

This book makes a case for the synergetic union between reality TV and the music industry. It delves into technological change in popular music, and the role of music reality TV and social media in the pop production process. It challenges the current scholarship which does not adequately distinguish the economic significance of these developments.

Media, Materiality and Memory examines the entwinement of material music objects, technology and memory in relation to a range of independent record labels. Moving from Edison’s phonograph to digital music files, from record collections to online archives, Roy argues that materiality plays a crucial role in constructing and understanding the territory of recorded sound. A substantial contribution to the field of music and material culture studies, this book provides a nuanced and timely reflection on nostalgia and forgetting in the digital age.

In the last two decades, Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) have emerged as a new interface type that interlinks the digital and physical worlds. Drawing upon users' knowledge and skills of interaction with the real non-digital world, TUIs show a potential to enhance the way in which people interact with and leverage digital information. However, TUI research is still in its infancy and extensive research is required in order to fully understand the implications of tangible user interfaces, to develop technologies that further bridge the digital and the physical, and to guide TUI design with empirical knowledge. This paper examines the existing body of work on Tangible User Interfaces. We start by sketching the history of tangible user interfaces, examining the intellectual origins of this field. We then present TUIs in a broader context, survey application domains, and review frameworks and taxonomies. We also discuss conceptual foundations of TUIs including perspectives from cognitive sciences, psychology, and philosophy. Methods and technologies for designing, building, and evaluating TUIs are also addressed. Finally, we discuss the strengths and limitations of TUIs and chart directions for future research.