Research and evaluation of a performer-friendly music stand

Dr. Juichi Kosakaya, Senior Engineer

Hitachi Engineering Company, Japan

Tue Mar 08 10:00:00 NZDT 2005 in Room 031, MSCS

Abstract

A performer-friendly electronic music stand not only lightens the load on performers (especially the players of two-handed instruments) by replacing manual page-turning with the operation of a foot switch or other such means, but also offers various other benefits including the freedom to add and delete memos, greater ease in the management of musical scores, a facility for turning pages for multiple players at the same time, and a back-lit display that allows performances to continue in darkness. This technology is set to revolutionize the current paper-based sheet music system which has remained unchanged since the 16th century. Since our studies began in this field in 2000, we have applied for various patents and we have continued to refine our system through a process of trial and error by listening to the opinions of specialist musicians. In this paper we describe the implementation and trials of a demonstration device, and we introduce one of this device's main features - a page-turning scheme based on time delays and variable page refresh ratios that employs an estimation method based on glance analysis.