Exploring the Design Space of hand-Controlled Guitar effects for Live Music

Many new interfaces for musical expression are hand or gesture controlled. For guitarists especially, this opens new ways to control sound effects while playing live. At the same time it is a challenge regarding the conception and design of such hand-controlled effects as guitarists usually use both hands for playing. In this paper we elaborate this particular design space to support future development. For this purpose we analyse four different examples of controllers that already in use and one purpose-built prototype called “UniCoMP” (Universal Control for Musical Performances). For the latter we additionally present the results of an evaluation during a live concert. Our study illustrates that hand-controlled guitar effects are a powerful alternative for traditional foot-controlled devices keeping in mind important design issues.