Beholden to our tools: negotiating with technology while sketching digital instruments

Digital musical instrument design is often presented as an open-ended creative process in which technology is adopted and adapted to serve the musical will of the designer. The real-time music programming languages powering many new instruments often provide access to audio manipulation at a low level, theoretically allowing the creation of any sonic structure from primitive operations. As a result, designers may assume that these seemingly omnipotent tools are pliable vehicles for the expression of musical ideas. We present the outcomes of a compositional game in which sound designers were invited to create simple instruments using common sensors and the Pure Data programming language. We report on the patterns and structures that often emerged during the exercise, arguing that designers respond strongly to suggestions offered by the tools they use. We discuss the idea that current music programming languages may be as culturally loaded as the communities of practice that produce and use them. Instrument making is then best viewed as a protracted negotiation between designer and tools.