Abstract
A fundamental assumption in the fields of human-computer interaction and usability studies is that interfaces should be designed for ease of use, with a few exceptions such as the trade-off with long-term power. In this chapter it is argued that in music interaction the situation is far more complex, with social, technical, artistic, and psychological reasons why difficulty is in some cases a good thing, and in other cases a necessary evil. Different aspects of static and time-varying difficulty in music interaction are categorised. Some specific areas in which difficulty seems to be inextricably linked to positive aspects of music interaction are described. This is followed by discussion of some areas in which difficulty is undesirable and, perhaps, avoidable. Examples are drawn from music interaction research in general and from other chapters of this book in particular.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Apple. (2011). GarageBand. http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband. Accessed 12 Sept 2011.
Armstrong, N. (2006). An enactive approach to digital musical instrument design. PhD thesis, Princeton University, Princeton.
AxCent Tuning Systems. (2013). http://www.axcenttuning.com. Accessed 21 Jan 2013.
Bills, A. G. (1934). The curve of learning. New York: Longmans, Green and Co.
Boese, C. (2006). Usability of accordions. Interaction design association web forum. http://www.ixda.org/node/18728. Accessed 11 Sept 2011.
Bouwer, A., Holland, S., & Dalgleish, M. (2013a). The Haptic Bracelets: Learning multi-limb rhythm skills from haptic stimuli while reading. In S. Holland, K. Wilkie, P. Mulholland, & A. Seago (Eds.), Music and human-computer interaction (pp. 101–122). London: Springer. ISBN 978-1-4471-2989-9.
Bouwer, A., Holland, S., & Dalgleish, M. (2013b). Song walker harmony space: Embodied interaction design for complex musical skills. In S. Holland, K. Wilkie, P. Mulholland, & A. Seago (Eds.), Music and human-computer interaction (pp. 207–221). London: Springer. ISBN 978-1-4471-2989-9.
Bozkurt, B. (2011). Otomata. http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata. Accessed 20 Nov 2011.
Brandao, M., Wiggins, G., & Pain, H. (1999). Computers in music education. In Proceedings of the AISB’99 symposium on musical creativity (pp. 82–88).
Collins, N. (2003). Generative music and laptop performance. Contemporary Music Review, 22(4), 67–79.
Cook, J. (1998). Mentoring, metacognition and music: Interaction analyses and implications for intelligent learning environments. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 9, 45–87.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper Collins.
Delzell, J. K., & Leppla, D. A. (1992). Gender association of musical instruments and preferences of fourth-grade students for selected instruments. Journal of Research in Music Education, 40(2), 93–103. doi:10.2307/3345559.
Eno, B., & Chilvers, P. (2009). Bloom. http://www.generativemusic.com/bloom.html. Accessed 20 Nov 2011.
Gentner, D., & Nielsen, J. (1996). The Anti-Mac interface. Communications of the ACM, 39(8), 70–82. http://www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html. Accessed 9 Sept 2011.
Gifford, T. (2013). Appropriate and complementary rhythmic improvisation in an interactive music system. In S. Holland, K. Wilkie, P. Mulholland, & A. Seago (Eds.), Music and human-computer interaction (pp. 271–286). London: Springer. ISBN 978-1-4471-2989-9.
Gillespie, R., & O’Modrain, S. (2011). Embodied cognition as a motivating perspective for haptic interaction design: A position paper. In World haptics conference. Istanbul: IEEE.
Gruson, L. M. (1988). Rehearsal skill and musical competence: Does practice make perfect? In J. A. Sloboda (Ed.), Generative processes in music: The psychology of performance, improvisation, and composition (pp. 91–112). New York: Oxford University Press.
Harmonix Music Systems. (2005). Guitar Hero. Sunnyvale: Red Octane.
Harmonix Music Systems. (2007). Rock Band. Redwood City: Electronic Arts.
Hedegaard, M. (2005). The zone of proximal development as basis for instruction. In H. Daniels (Ed.), An introduction to Vygotsky (pp. 227–252). New York: Routledge.
Hofstadter, D. R. (1979). Gödel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid. New York: Penguin Books.
Holland, S. (2000). Artificial intelligence in music education: A critical review. In E. Miranda (Ed.), Readings in music and artificial intelligence, contemporary music studies (Vol. 20, pp. 239–274). Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Hornecker, E. (2011). The role of physicality in tangible and embodied interactions. Interactions, 18(2), 19–23.
Hughes, C., Wermelinger, M., & Holland, S. (2011). Sound spheres: The heuristic design and evaluation of a non-contact finger-tracking virtual musical instrument. In Proceedings of the 8th sound and music computing conference, Padova, Italy. http://oro.open.ac.uk/28709/. Accessed 8 Mar 2012.
Hunt, A., & Hermann, T. (2011). Interactive sonification. In T. Hermann, A. Hunt, & J. G. Neuhoff (Eds.), The sonification handbook. Berlin: Logos Verlag.
Johnson, R., Van der Linden, J., & Rogers. Y. (2011). Prototyping for the wild: Reflections on the design of MuSense, a lightweight wearable practice aid for the violin. BCS HCI workshop “When words fail: What can music interaction tell us about HCI?” 4 July 2011. Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne. http://mcl.open.ac.uk/Workshop. Accessed 8 Mar 2012.
Jones, M. K. (1989). Human-computer interaction: A design guide. Englewood Cliffs: Educational Technology.
Jordà, S., Geiger, G., Alonso, M., & Kaltenbrunner, M. (2007). The reacTable: Exploring the synergy between live music performance and tabletop tangible interfaces. In Proceedings of the international conference Tangible and Embedded Interaction (TEI07).
Karlstrom, P. (2007). Existential phenomenology and design—Why “ready-to-hand” is not enough. Unpublished, available: http://petter.blogs.dsv.su.se/files/2011/02/Existential_phenomenolgy-and-HCI.pdf. Accessed 9 Sept 2011.
Kock, S.V., & Bouwer, A. (2011). Towards wearable support for nomadic musicians. Paper presented at workshop “When words fail: What can music interaction tell us about HCI?” at the British conference on human-computer interaction, 4 July 2011, Newcastle, UK.
Krefeld, V., & Waisvisz, M. (1990). The hand in the web: An interview with Michel Waisvisz. Computer Music Journal, 14(2), 28–33.
Leman, M. (2008). Embodied music cognition and mediation technology. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Levitin, D. (2006). This is your brain on music: The science of a human obsession. East Rutherford: Penguin Putnam.
Massey, A. (2003). Music and the arts: usability in fact and as metaphor. http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/usability_resources/conference/2003/massey_music_arts.html. Accessed 12Sept 2011.
McDermott, J., Griffith, N. J. L., & O’Neill, M. (2007). Evolutionary GUIs for sound synthesis. In Applications of evolutionary computing. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer.
Miller, K. (2009). Schizophonic performance: Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Virtual Virtuosity. Journal of the Society for American Music, 3(4), 395–429. doi:10.1017/S1752196309990666.
Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002). The concept of flow. In C. R. Snyder (Ed.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 89–105). New York: Oxford University Press.
National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (Ireland). (2011). Arts education: Music. http://www.curriculumonline.ie/en/Primary_School_Curriculum/Arts_Education/Music/Arts_Education_Music_arts.html. Accessed 12 Sept 2011.
Nielsen, J. (2003). Usability 101: Introduction to usability. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html. Accessed 9 Sept 2011.
Nielsen, J. (2006). Progressive disclosure. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/progressive-disclosure.html. Accessed 9 Sept 2011.
Pachet, F. (2003). The continuator: Musical interaction with style. Journal of New Music Research, 32(3), 333–341.
Paine, G. (2009). Gesture and morphology in laptop music performance. In R. Dean (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of computer music (pp. 214–232). New York: Oxford University Press.
Ritter, F. E., & Schooler, L. J. (2002). The learning curve. In: International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (pp. 8602–8605). Amsterdam: Pergamon. http://www.iesbs.com/
Rowe, R. (2001). Machine musicianship. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Ruso, B., Renninger, L. A., & Atzwanger, K. (2003). Human habitat preferences: A generative territory for evolutionary aesthetics research. In E. Voland & K. Grammer (Eds.), Evolutionary aesthetics (pp. 279–294). Heidelberg/Berlin/NewYork: Springer.
Seago, A. (2013). A new interaction strategy for musical timbre design. In S. Holland, K. Wilkie, P. Mulholland, & A. Seago (Eds.), Music and human-computer interaction (pp. 153–170). London: Springer. ISBN 978-1-4471-2989-9.
Smith, M., Burke, C., Draper, S., & Potter, C. (2008). The energy cost of rock drumming: a case study. European College of Sport Science (ECSS) 13th annual Congress, July 2008, Estoril, Portugal.
Smule. (2008). iPhone Ocarina. http://ocarina.smule.com/. Accessed 20 Nov 2011.
Stowell, D., & McLean, A. (2013). Live music-making: A rich open task requires a rich open interface. In S. Holland, K. Wilkie, P. Mulholland, & A. Seago (Eds.), Music and human-computer interaction (pp. 139–152). London: Springer. ISBN 978-1-4471-2989-9.
Stuart, C. (2003). The object of performance: Aural performativity in contemporary laptop music. Contemporary Music Review, 22(4), 59–65.
Suthers, D. D. (2001). Towards a systematic study of representational guidance for collaborative learning discourse. Journal of Universal Computer Science, 7(3).
Swift, B. (2013). Chasing a feeling: Experience in computer supported jamming. In S. Holland, K. Wilkie, P. Mulholland, & A. Seago (Eds.), Music and human-computer interaction (pp. 85–100). London: Springer. ISBN 978-1-4471-2989-9.
Tammelin, O, (1999). Jeskola Buzz. http://jeskola.net/buzz. Accessed 12 Sept 2011.
Tanaka, A. (2000). Musical performance practice on sensor-based instruments. In Trends in gestural control of music. Centre Pompidou: IRCAM.
Thornhill, R. (2003). Darwinian aesthetics informs traditional aesthetics. In E. Voland & K. Grammer (Eds.), Evolutionary aesthetics (pp. 9–35). Berlin: Springer.
TOPLAP. (2011). http://www.toplap.org/index.php/ManifestoDraft. Accessed 12 Sept 2011.
Van Nimwegen, C., van Oostendorp, H., & Schijf, H. J. M. (2004). Externalization vs. Internalization: The influence on problem solving performance. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’04). Piscataway: IEEE.
Wagner, R. (1830). The virtuoso and the artist (trans. Ellis, W.). http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagvirtu.htm. Accessed 9 Sept 2011.
Wallis, I., Ingalls, T., Campana, E., & Vuong, C. (2013). Amateur musicians, long-term engagement, and HCI. In S. Holland, K. Wilkie, P. Mulholland, & A. Seago (Eds.), Music and human-computer interaction (pp. 49–66). London: Springer. ISBN 978-1-4471-2989-9.
Wilson, W. (2002). Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 9(4), 625–636.
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to the organisers of the 2011 British Computer Society HCI conference workshop “When Words Fail: What can Music Interaction tell us about HCI?”, and to all participants in the workshop break-out group on the topic of difficulty in music interaction: Rose Johnson, Isaac Wallis, Alex McLean, Peter Quinn, Andrew McPherson, Mat Dalgleish, JMcD, and AB. JMcD is funded by an IRCSET/Marie Curie Inspire Fellowship.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag London
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McDermott, J., Gifford, T., Bouwer, A., Wagy, M. (2013). Should Music Interaction Be Easy?. In: Holland, S., Wilkie, K., Mulholland, P., Seago, A. (eds) Music and Human-Computer Interaction. Springer Series on Cultural Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2990-5_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2990-5_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-2989-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-2990-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)