Results

Scenes from a videotaped browsing

Each picture depicts what a user would see while traversing into the strings section to audition the acoustic guitars. Each major section (keyboards, percussion, strings, and woodwinds) is represented by a generic icon. The instruments and links become white while their sounds are auditioned.

Aerial view

The user auditions a representative sound from each major section: keyboards, percussion, strings, and woodwinds.

Strings

The user is now closer to the strings section and auditions the same four major sounds as in the aerial view: keyboards, percussion, strings, and woodwinds.

Closeup of strings

The user auditions the representative strings: basses, cellos, guitars, and violins.

Guitars

The user auditions just the guitars: acoustic and electric.

Future research

Future research could enhance the advantages of a virtual sound library navigation tool. The selection and browsing tools shown here could be adapted for use as performance tools: one could load sounds directly into MIDI instruments and compositions. One could also create new sounds by grabbing, combining, and manipulating existing ones.

Summary

The Audio Browser was found to be

effective
(the user can scan the sound library itself without relying on representations of the database that might be imprecise)
adaptible
(it uses a flexible base that can be adapted for different uses, which is important in order to be a useful tool)
creative
(it is an environment that can be integrated with other multimedia creation tools)

With an ideal digital sound library and navigation tools for it, composing or performing music will more easily be able to draw on large databases of sound samples. This work demonstrates that such a tool is not far away from today's capabilities.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Human Interface Technology Laboratory of the Washington Technology Center at the University of Washington for their support of this research.

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