Since the MIDI 1.0 specification [1], well over 15 years ago, many have been the attempts to give a solution to all the limitations that soon became clear. None of these have had a happy ending, mainly due to commercial interests and as a result, when trying to find an appropriate synthesis control user interface, we had not many choices but the use of MIDI. That’s the reason why the idea of defining a new user interface aroused. In this article, the main components of this interface will be discussed, paying special attention to the advantages and new features it reports to the enduser.

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The basic Spectral Modeling Synthesis (SMS) technique models sounds as the sum of sinusoids plus a residual. Though this analysis/synthesis system has proved to be successful in transforming sounds, more powerful and intuitive musical transformations can be achieved by moving into the SMS high-level attribute plane. In this paper we describe how to extract high level sound attributes from the basic representation, modify them, and add them back before the synthesis stage. In this process new problems come up for which we propose some initial solutions.

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