The Shape Sequencer is a new kind of musical instrument for live performance by groups of players.

It looks a little bit like this at the moment, but it is subject to development at the whim of it's creator, poil. These coloured shapes represent different sounds, which can be rotated, scaled and flung about.

There are up to four players, each with their own colour, using joypads to control four different shapes each, on the same screen. The precise way they manipulate these shapes changes with different versions of the instrument, but so far the idea of recording small loops of movement is working well.

Why?

Why do we play games but use software? Why is so much software so difficult to play with? What exactly is the difference between the playing of a game and the playing of a musical instrument? The Shape Sequencer is an attempt to approach the design of software having learnt from games. When watching someone playing a game it is usually as easy to understand what is going on as when watching someone play a musical instrument, and so it should be for the laptop musician.

Notes on a score look nothing like they sound. We really don't need to use such limited sign-systems when we play with music, once everyone playing knows the new rules of the game. Nor is there any reason, with the technology available, to continue the tradition of a static score when music is temporal. The problem is, then, building a system that is easy to understand and yet satisfyingly flexible. The Shape Sequencer uses simple shapes and colours in the hope that this will allow more complexity to emerge later.

How?

The Shape Sequencer has been prototyped using Pure Data (pd), a real-time graphical programming language for audio synthesis, with GEM handling the 3D graphics.