Perspectives on the Design of Musical Auditory Interfaces

This paper addresses the issue of music as a communication medium in auditory human-computer interfaces. So far, psychoacoustics has had a great influence on the development of auditory interfaces, directly and through music cognition. We suggest that a better understanding of the processes involved in the perception of actual musical excerpts should allow musical auditory interface designers to exploit the communicative potential of music. In this respect, we argue that the real advantage of music as a communication medium relies on the richness of its specifically musical meanings rather than on its formal structure. Finally, we propose a method for automating the design of musical auditory interfaces, in order to make this design possible to non-musician designers.