BAO PAO
Jean Haury, Jean Schmutz und Puce à l’oreille: BAO-PAO
“And so, can a whole piece be played with a single touch?” Long time ago Jean Haury asked this question to himself Regarding an essay about “The movents of touch of the keyboards” ("Le mouvement des touches des claviers").
An “accident on the way” triggered everything: A young musician (and at the same time a medical student) injured his fingers playing a “hard-steering” piano, due to the resistance of the keys, so rested six months without being able to play. “If one presses the key of a modern piano, he explained the equivalent of an average force of 60 Gramm is expended. AN Etude of Chopin – for example – counts 1600 notes and requires a lot of energy. If you play on a piano with even more “hard-steering” keys, that makes a difference of 20 Gramm per key. If the body is not wormed up, it can be damaged.”
Due to this “accident” an idea germinated in Jean Haury’s mind: to simplify and to economize the gesture of playing an instrument. At the starting point he places the following assumption, the equation that a key equals an interrupter. “The keyboard is an instrument that is easy to analyze: it is nothing more than a mechanical relay; a sort of a remote control” stated the researcher. Ardent by the informatics, hey analyzed the piano play and designed a program that pre-saves a music score. Charged with this memory the computer connects to an expressive key/gesture through which the musician (amateur or experienced/professional) forms his expression. Forte or piano, legato or staccato expressed through a sound generator.
(-?-) The use of this software by handicapped people was obviously important for the researcher. The intention already appeared during the (first -?- ) meeting of Jean Haury, the Parisian and Jean Schmutz from Marseille – the engineer of arts and crafts and flutist, who was the founder of La Puce à l’oreille1992, an association with the goal to enable a musical practice to handicapped people even if they can’t play an existing instrument.
The magic wand
of this lucky meeting the invention of a funny instrument – le BAO-PAO emerged short for “baguette assistée par ordinateur/pupitre assisté par ordinateur” (eng. Computer assisted wand / computer assisted music stand) with the prototype being born three years ago.
The object with the exotic name presents itself with the form of a circular arc out of chromed steel with a diameter of 1.20 m mounted on an ordinary stand carrying two sphere at the two ends: a laser diode on the one side, a light receptor at the other one. Put to action, the machine spans its invisible cord – a laser beam – enough to be cut (interrupted) with a stick in order to trigger the software (the previous saved piece) and releasing the sound. A fugue by Bach, Salsa, contemporary music.
The user therefore doesn’t produce any sound (this is done by the electronics), neither the pitch (this is taken care of by the software). The economy -?- of the gesture follows those two parameters, Jean Schmutz sums up. The control of the expression is therefore lest to the player. “If the Wand passes by fast, one produces a forte sound. If the speed is slow, the sound will be piano. The instrument reacts like a key, a virtual one, that allows coloring of the sound”, the engineer explains.
“It is magic!” an astonishing “source of pleasure”. A pleasure that can be shared; because the instrument can be played through by arcs by as many handicapped persons. It is a collective activity – rare and precious – […] (-?-)
As another innovative device Puce is presenting sensors „capturing“ electronically the gesture. With a paraplegic player one can register the minor movements of the palpitation of the neck which can be translated into a pattern for data processing. Demonstrated for example by the orchestra “Contre-Silence” that was formed several years ago by nine paraplegic persons who showed that a it is possible to bring together uniting forces.
(-?-) Guiding the way, the BAO-PAO also finds out the favorite ways of the musicians to “manage the score”, says Jean Schmutz. “As it is therefore easier to play they can create/execute ten oeuvres in ten hours. Instead of reading a score, and thinking about it they can play it immediately.” The pleasure also intrigues a broader audience, reached by La Puce (-?-).
The BAO-PAO spread out to the traditional conservatoire at Gap (High-Alps) as well as to a music school at La Gare , next to Toulon (accessible also for handicapped people), at Lozère, àt Orange,, in the region of Paris. Several public authorities (of the “ministère de la culture au conseil général des Bouches-du-Rhône”), as well as the association “Dactylion” (for research activities) or the “l'Association française pour la myopathie” help La Puce to even more alive nowadays.
