A Whole New Body of Music

In a cavernous, mirrored room in an industrial section of Santa Monica, John Laraio appears to be making music out of thin air.

The long-haired musician and chief executive of Hydra Productions waves his arms like a symphony conductor in front of 15 infrared beams that produce thumping bass beats, electronic melodies and digitized sounds of rain and thunder. As his hands pierce the invisible beams, they trigger sensors that in turn generate an array of sounds that combine to form Laraio’s distinctive music.

But Laraio and his colleagues are not merely making music--they are creating an entirely new musical instrument.

“The dream is that every body movement generates music,” said Amir Rubin, chief executive of Hydra Productions’ 8-year-old parent company, Interactive Light.

Just as technology has found its way into everything from cars to kitchen appliances, it is also infiltrating a new wave of musical instruments. Some of the latest high-tech music-making gear will be on display in Los Angeles this week at the annual convention of NAMM, the International Music Products Assn. (formerly called the National Assn. of Music Merchants).

Of course, technology has been shaping the way music is created for centuries, from the installation of mechanical valves on brass horns to the layering of electronic signals inside a synthesizer. Today, computer chips and sensors are juicing up instruments as old as cellos and as cutting-edge as deejay samplers. One budding entrepreneur has even designed a system that would turn the interior of a car into a drum machine on wheels.

The engineers at Interactive Light originally planned to use their sensor for home security systems and auto-collision warning devices. Then they realized their technology could find a niche in the entertainment business.

The Dimension Beam, as their product is known, emits an egg-shaped zone of infrared light that can stretch for several feet and has concentric layers like an onion. When a user’s hand pierces the beam, the light bounces back to a tiny receiver that can calculate exactly where the hand is, based on the intensity of the reflected light. By emitting thousands of infrared pulses each second, the system can precisely track the motion of the user’s hand.

Each of the 128 layers in the beam corresponds to a slightly different version of a pre-programmed sound. For example, a user can run through a musical scale by moving his hand away from the sensor, or change the tempo of a drum rhythm by waving his hand around in the sensor field.

Roland Corp., one of the biggest names in high-tech music, licensed the technology in November and will introduce its first two products incorporating the Dimension Beam to retailers Wednesday night. Both will allow deejays to change the tempo, beat and melody of their techno-creations by moving their bodies instead of laying their hands on equipment. The devices will cost between $695 and $2,000.

The instruments “become more interactive and physically involved with the player,” said Dennis Houlihan, the Los Angeles-based U.S. president of Japan’s Roland. “A really animated deejay will move with the music, and this just opens up a ton more choices, as opposed to just pushing the buttons.”

Coda Music Technologies is also using high-tech additives to soup up regular instrument playing. The company’s Vivace Practice Studio can accompany soloists on more than 4,000 musical compositions--from classical to top 40--via a personal computer outfitted with a microphone, foot pedal, cartridge reader and software.

The $199 Vivace is more than just a fine-arts version of a karaoke machine. The cassette-like cartridges provide background music for players of flutes, clarinets and other wind instruments, and the accompaniment can adjust itself to follow the lead of the player.

“It slows down as you slow down and it speeds up as you speed up,” said John Paulson, president of the Eden Prairie, Minn.-based company, which will demonstrate the product at NAMM. “All the things a good human accompanist does, Vivace does as well. That’s where we’re bringing the power of the computer to bear.”

The microphone listens for the note the musician plays, and the computer analyzes the sound wave to identify it. Each note is time-stamped to keep track of the player’s tempo. The Vivace software takes that data and compares it to what it expects to see if the music is played correctly. Then, if there is a variation, Vivace adjusts to match it.

Paulson said Coda Music Technologies is also developing a series of assessment products based on its core “intelligent accompaniment” technology. For example, the software could tell a musician whether she is having trouble keeping a steady beat or is consistently playing a particular note off-key.

Or she could ditch the instrument altogether and just play the computer keyboard.

That’s the idea behind Hotz Trax 2, a $79 software package from Agoura Hills-based Hotz Interactive that will start shipping after the NAMM convention. Users can pound out melodies on their keyboards to accompany background music played by their PCs. Hotz Trax 2 is programmed to ensure that any key played will be in tune with the music, based on chord structure and scales.

Advanced composers who want to improvise melodies for their own background music can use the Hotz Translater to program their work into the PC. That software--which sells for several thousand dollars--can be preset with chords and scales typical of different types of ethnic music so that improvised melodies will automatically have a Middle Eastern or Asian flavor, said James Grunke, president of Hotz Interactive.

“Hotz Trax is to musical performance and composition what graphics software is to visual arts creation,” Grunke said. “While a person may not be able to sit down and draw by hand like an artist who has studied all his life, graphics software allows people to get to the next level. That’s what we do.”

At the MIT Media Lab, professor of music and media Tod Machover is designing several new breeds of cutting-edge instruments. The Juilliard-trained musician used a variety of sensors to build something called a hypercello for famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

The instrument is sleeker than a traditional cello and is played the same way. But in addition to creating music by passing a bow over the four strings, the hypercello produces sounds in response to such factors as how hard the musician is gripping the bow, how fast the bow is moving and whether the cellist is pressing strings on the fingerboard. Sometimes the hypercello transposes the music into a funkier electronic form, and sometimes it mixes it with other music for a more complex melody.

In the course of the sensor research required to create the hypercello (and its companion, the hyperviolin), Machover’s team discovered that the electric field of the entire human body could be used to play specially designed instruments. That led to the Sensor Chair, which makes music as a person--who sits on a metal mesh seat to become part of the chair’s electric field--gestures with her arms in front of sensor-laden plexiglass poles.

Machover’s latest creation is a collection of six unique interactive instruments that collectively produce something called the Brain Opera. One of them, the Speaking Tree, requires the user to sing a note and then responds with an accompaniment that is more harmonious if the user sings more clearly. Another instrument, called Harmonic Driving, is a musical variation on auto-racing video games. The user sits in front of a computer screen and “drives” along music-making roads and pathways. The more adventurous and skilled drivers are rewarded with better music. The Brain Opera is currently on tour, although no stops in Los Angeles are planned.

In the next two years, Machover hopes to create a series of musical toys that children can play by twisting and squeezing them. The Media Lab-sponsored initiative, called “Toys of Tomorrow,” will be announced at a major toy convention in New York next month.

“This is far from the model of playing notes or drums,” said Machover, who is on sabbatical and spending his time in his Big Sur studio. “You’ll be able to sculpt sounds with your hands like a lump of clay.”

Terry Eubanks also hopes to create an instrument for novices. The carpenter from suburban Detroit has a penchant for banging his foot on the interior of his Ford van in time to the music on the radio. That’s how he hit upon the idea for an instrument he plans to call Kar-Percussions.

His contraption--which was awarded a patent in 1996 but has not yet been built--would include touch sensors installed under a car’s floor mats and connected to an amplifier that could be controlled by a radio dial. Then the driver and passengers could produce a variety of pre-programmed drum sounds by simply tapping their feet. An additional sensor that measures vibration could be attached to the steering column so the driver could activate the drum beats by tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

Eubanks, who has invested $10,000 developing Kar-Percussions, is searching for a manufacturer. He hopes the instrument will retail for less than $200.

“I can’t wait to use it, and I wish somebody would pick it up so that I can start jamming,” Eubanks said. “With all of the road rage going on nowadays, this would be a good outlet for drivers’ stress.”

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* A MUSICAL Q & A: Roland Corp.’s Dennis Houlihan on traditional vs. electronic. D3