MUSE: a Music Sandbox Environment for Novices

Abstract

Collaborative musical interfaces for novices allow people with limited to no musical education access to a “walk-up and play” group musical experience. However, research shows that the ease-of-use of an interface tends to be inversely proportional with its creative affordances. My research aims at increasing the level of creative controls in interfaces for novices without compromising the “walk-up and play” characteristic or negatively affecting the perceived quality of the musical output. This thesis proposes a new design paradigm – a “game of music” and presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of MUSE – a real time, collaborative musical interface for novices. Participants in user studies of MUSE found learning and using the interface easy, described the music as pleasant, and reported having creative control over the music output. Further research could explore this new paradigm and its potential to maximize creative affordances when designing new collaborative musical interactions for novices.