This paper provides a review of gestural control of sound synthesis in the context of the design and evaluation of digital musical instruments. It discusses research in various areas related to this field and equally focuses on four main topics: analysis of music performers’ gestures, gestural capture technologies, real-time sound synthesis methods, and strategies for mapping gesture variables to sound synthesis input parameters. Finally, this approach is illustrated by presenting an application of this research to the control of digital audio effects.

Abstract. This paper deals with the gestural language of instrumentalists playing wind instruments. It discusses the role of non-obvious performer gestures that may nevertheless influence the final sound produced by the acoustic instrument. These gestures have not commonly been considered in sound synthesis, although they are an integral part of the instrumentalist’s full gestural language. The structure of this paper will be based on an analysis of these non-obvious gestures followed by some comments on how to best classify them according to existing research on gesture reviewed in the introduction; finally, the influence of these gestures on the sound produced by the instrument will be studied and measurement and simulation results presented. 1

Digital musical instruments do not depend on physical constraints faced by their acoustic counterparts, such as characteristics of tubes, membranes, strings, etc. This fact permits a huge diversity of possibilities regarding sound production, but on the other hand strategies to design and perform these new instruments need to be devised in order to provide the same level of control subtlety available in acoustic instruments. In this paper I review various topics related to gestural control of music using digital musical instruments and identify possible trends in this domain.

In this article, we comment on various definitions of the term gesture in the general literature of humanhuman and human-computer interaction and in the musica domain. Different propositions of gesture classifications are then discussed and topics from other disciplines, that are important to the discussion on gesture and music, are presented. Concepts developed by the first author related to instrumental gestures, such as energy continuum, gestural channel, and instrumental gesture typology are reviewed in this context. The introduction of case studies on acoustic instruments helps in supporting the theory. Finally, the role of non-obvious (ancillary or accompanist) gestures is discussed with respect to clarinet playing.