Gestural User Interface for Audio Multitrack Real-time Stereo Mixing

Sound mixing is a well-established task applied (directly or indirectly) in many fields of music and sound production. For example, in the case of classical music orchestras, their conductors perform sound mixing by specifying the reproduction gain of specific groups of musical instruments or of the entire orchestra. Moreover, modern sound artists and performers also employ sound mixing when they compose music or improvise in real-time. In this work a system is presented that incorporates a gestural interface for real-time multitrack sound mixing. The proposed gestural sound mixing control scheme is implemented on an open hardware micro-controller board, using common sensor modules. The gestures employed are as close as possible to the ones particularly used by the orchestra conductors. The system overall performance is also evaluated in terms of the achieved user experience through subjective tests.