Expressive Potential

I had an interesting discussion with sysphus13 on YouTube recently. Commenting on a Thummer demo there, he stated that it was "pretentious" for me to claim that the Thummer was more expressive than the piano.


I looked up the definition just to make sure, and a pretentious claim is one that is "unjustified or excessive."


So, is my claim of the Thummer's expressive power unjustified or excessive? It all depends on the metric that is used to measure "expressive potential."


It's all about potential, after all. The violin, piano, etc., are just objects, expressing nothing (except perhaps as statuary).

I don't know what the ideal metric of expressive potential might be, but it's certainly not "how expressive famous musicians of the past have been with it." That's not a metric of expressive potential; that's a measure of expressive realization. Any musical instrument that's been around for a while -- including the kazoo -- has a higher degree of expressive realization than a new instrument that's still on the drawing board. But the one on the drawing board might have much more expressive potential.

Until the ideal metric for expressive potential is found, a reasonable rule of thumb might be the instrument's Degrees of Freedom (DoF) -- the number of independent control variables a performer can affect in real time. More DoF == more expressive potential.

The Thummer has pressure-sensitive buttons (1 DoF), two joysticks (4 DoF), two optional foot-pedals (2 DoF), and optional internal motion sensors (up to 6 DoF). That's 13 DoF.

The piano has velocity-sensitive keys (1 DoF) and three foot pedals (3 DoF). That's 4 DoF. Keyboard synths have more DoF, but you've got to stop playing with one hand or the other to manipulate their extra controls, and none of them come close to poviding 13 DoF.

If the Thummer has 13 DoF, the piano has 4, and the number of DoF is a reasonable metric for expressive potential, then the Thummer's expressive potential is considerably greater than that of the piano.

Also, many experts' opinions support the claim that the Thummer's expressive power is revolutionary.

So the claim that "the Thummer is more expressive than the piano" is neither excessive nor unjustified, and therefore not pretentious.

How long it will take musicians to realize the Thummer's expressive potential is another question entirely.