First, I don’t think I knew that Max Mathews was still alive.

The pioneer of computer music demonstrates his Radio Baton instrument in this half-hour video. The instrument (or controller, if you want to split hairs) consists of two batons with radio transmitters at the tips, which you wave over a panel that can sense their locations in three dimensions. That gives you six variables you can use to control whatever you want.

Mathews says:

The model that I’m using for this control is not the model of a violinist or a pianist playing a score. Rather, it’s the model of an orchestra conductor conducting music. The orchestra conductor doesn’t have to play all of the notes in a piece, or any of the notes, but he can control the expression of the piece and get the musician to follow his batons.

It’s an interesting model of technological music production, “playing” preloaded scores. For those of you who have been following along, it may be interesting to note that the “expressive” parts of music Mathews describes in the video (tempo and volume) are exactly what you could control on the old Pianola. Is Mathews “playing” the music like a discman or like an instrumentalist? Substituting “conducting” for “playing” is an interesting way to play on pre-existing arrangements of musical labor and validate his work. Now I’m curious to see whether the idea of “conducting” music was explicitly use by proponents of the player piano in the first part of the 20th century…

There is much more information about the idea of a “conductor program” at Stephen Malinowski’s page on it, where you can see some videos and download an application that lets you tap through MIDI files. (A similar idea is at play in Smule’s Magic Piano iPad app.)

(via @CompMusicBlog)