research
Institute of Sonology – Masters program – 2025/ 2027
Re-Mapping the Instrument: Transferring Instrumental Muscle Memory into Electronic Music Performance
This research explores how instrumental muscle memory—understood as a preconscious capacity to produce musical patterns and nuanced expression—can be re-directed toward controlling electronic sound in real time. Taking the guitar as a point of departure, the project decomposes the instrument’s physical and gestural interface, experimenting with new mappings between bodily action and sonic response. The goal is to retain the expressive subtleties of an electro-acoustic instrument, while expanding their functions to synthesis, dynamic processing, and spatialization.
The dense cultural background of the guitar shapes the way it is played and heard. This project acknowledges that heritage while seeking to detach the instrument from its idiomatic patterns. By treating the guitar primarily as a body–machine interface and sound object, it re-examines how familiar gestures and tactile feedback can generate unfamiliar sonic results, extending the expressive domain of performance beyond traditional technique.
Through iterative prototyping and live performance, the research develops and tests mappings that translate micro-gestures of the hands and body into effective control of electronic sound.
The process involves the design of custom performance system that interpret physical gesture as a multidimensional control source, allowing the performer to manipulate synthesis parameters, spatial diffusion, and real-time processing. These experiments create musical situations that intentionally challenge habitual gestures, forcing the performer to form new relationships between motion and sonic outcome. This performative inquiry reveals how embodied skill—shaped by the instrumental practice—can be re-purposed to produce expressive interactions with electronic sound processes.
While centered on the guitar, the methodology is conceived as transferable to other instruments, proposing a broader framework for re-embodying instrumental skill within electronic music contexts.