Designing Digital Musical Instruments with Victor Zappi | WolfTalk #029

Bela platform, Android audio hacking & more!

Please accept statistics and marketing cookies to access the podcast player.

Listen on

Introduction

Victor Zappi is a creator, researcher, and educator at the intersection of music, technology, and interaction design. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Music Technology at Northeastern University. In his career, among others, he worked on the Bela hardware platform during his time at Queen Mary University of London’s prestigious Centre for Digital Music (C4DM).

I had the pleasure of meeting Victor at the DAFx 2024 conference, where we immediately connected over his paper on running neural networks on Android devices. It turned out he used my Android wavetable synthesizer tutorial in one of his research experiments (with proper citation, of course 😉).

In this episode, apart from Victor’s inspiring career, we focus on digital musical instruments:

What is a “good” digital musical instrument like?
Is it a fixed “box” that you should learn how to play?
Or should it be “abused” by opening “the box,” and messing with its internals?
Can an artist change the digital instrument to make it their own?

We conclude with a discussion of Victor’s LDSP C++ framework, which enables low-level audio device control on Android devices.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of musical interfaces, hackable hardware, and the technology that drives them!

Note: If you like the podcast so far, please, go to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review there. You can do so on Spotify as well. It will benefit both sides: more reviews mean a broader reach on Apple Podcasts and feedback can help me to improve the show and provide better quality content to you. You can also subscribe and give a like on YouTube. Thank you for doing this 🙏

Episode Contents

From this episode, you will learn:

How Victor Zappi’s journey led him through several disciplines to reach a unique intersection.
The story behind creating the Bela platform and its mission to provide ultra-low latency for interactive audio.
The philosophy of “hackable instruments” and “appropriation” in musical expression, inspired by concepts like John Cage’s prepared piano.
Insights into the LDSP C++ framework for achieving low-level audio device access on rooted Android devices.
The technology behind the Hyper Drumhead instrument and the potential of GPU-accelerated audio.
Practical advice for getting started in audio programming, DSP, and academic research.
An inside look at the NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression) community.

This episode was recorded on February 18, 2025.

References

People

Victor Zappi
- Institution Webpage
- GitHub
Andrew McPherson
Joshua Reiss

Universities & Research Labs

Conferences & Communities

Key Publications by Victor Zappi

Concepts & Technologies

Research Fields & Design Paradigms
1. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
2. Virtual Reality (VR)
3. Audio First Virtual Reality
4. Hackable Instruments
5. Appropriation & Customization
Audio & DSP
1. Real-time DSP
2. Audio Plugins
3. Latency & Jitter
4. Physical Modeling
5. Wave Equation & Numerical Solvers
6. Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) solver
7. Synthesis Techniques
  1. Articulatory / Vocal Tract Synthesis
  2. Granular Synthesis
  3. FM/AM Synthesis
8. MIDI
Computing
1. GPU Accelerated Audio & Synthesis
2. SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data)
  - NEON
3. Unified Memory Architecture
4. Neural Networks & Deep Learning
5. Embedded & Mobile Audio
6. Rooted Android Devices
Social & Philosophical Concepts
1. Circuit Bending
2. Right to Repair Movement
3. Experiential Learning
4. Open Source
5. E-waste & Sustainability
6. Democratization of Digital Musical Instruments

Artistic & Musical References

Thank you for listening! 🙏

Please accept marketing cookies to access the display and add comments.