July 10, 2007 — A new, digital wand-like instrument gives new meaning to "textured" sound by letting people record a noise and then brush, scrape, or tap it against objects to create effects.
Its makers hope the Sound of Touch device will eventually be used by everyone from musicians and kids, to sound-designers and scientists — anyone interested in "painting" with sound.
"It's about sound and the kind of intuition people have about sound," said David Merrill, a Ph.D. candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who along with fellow Ph.D. candidate Hayes Raffle, invented the device.
For decades, people have been using and manipulating digital audio, said Merrill. But they haven't had a way to combine their intuition about how physical materials sound with the experience of manipulating sounds with those materials.
Take sandpaper. You can imagine what it might sound like to rub your finger across it. But what would it sound like to rub your voice against it?
"The voice will sound gritty. Tap it against glass and it sounds glassy. Rub it against felt and it sounds fuzzy," said Raffle.
To record a sound sample, the user presses a button on the stem of the wand. A microphone at the tip records the sound — for example the hum of a car engine — as long as the button is pressed. Once recorded, the sample is ready for manipulation.
