Guitar augmentation for Percussive Fingerstyle: Combining self-reflexive practice and user-centred design

Abstract

What is the relationship between a musician-designer's auditory imagery for a musical piece, a design idea for an augmented instrument to support the realisation of that piece, and the aspiration to introduce the resulting instrument to a community of likeminded performers? We explore this NIME topic in the context of building the first iteration of an augmented acoustic guitar prototype for percussive fingerstyle guitarists. The first author, himself a percussive fingerstyle player, started the project of an augmented guitar with expectations and assumptions made around his own playing style, and in particular around the arrangement of one song. This input was complemented by the outcome of an interview study, in which percussive guitarists highlighted functional and creative requirements to suit their needs. We ran a pilot study to assess the resulting prototype, involving two other players. We present their feedback on two configurations of the prototype, one equalising the signal of surface sensors and the other based on sample triggering. The equalisation-based setting was better received, however both participants provided useful suggestions to improve the sample-triggering model following their own auditory imagery.