Background
A question explored through research
How could a mixing interface reflect the way people imagine a musical scene?
The idea began around 2003–2004, when Morten Büchert imagined a three-dimensional chessboard on which musical elements could be placed as objects. Their positions would express relationships: depth, width and a visual sense of how the music belonged together.
The intention was to help people explore a balance through listening and placement, without first having to understand every technical step. Distance meant the experience of a sound being further away, beyond a change in level alone.
Büchert approached Steven Gelineck, PhD researcher at Aalborg University, to ask whether the idea could be built, and Jesper Andersen, Associate Professor at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen, subsequently joined the collaboration. Research became part of the journey from that initial musical idea towards a practical tool.
The research background includes work on stage-based mixing interfaces: Towards an Interface for Music Mixing based on Smart Tangibles and Multitouch (Gelineck, Overholt, Büchert and Andersen, NIME 2013) and Stage Metaphor Mixing on a Multi-Touch Tablet Device (Gelineck, Korsgaard, Büchert and Andersen, AES Convention 137, 2014).
That history gives context to the design question. The papers describe the research prototypes of the time, not the released Field Engine product. The walkthrough above shows what Field Engine does today.
