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A laser harp is an electronic musical user interface and laser lighting display. It projects several laser beams played by the musician by blocking them to produce sounds, visually reminiscent of a harp. It was popularised by Jean-Michel Jarre, and has been a high-profile feature of almost all his concerts since 1981.
French composer Bernard Szajner applied to patent the laser harp in 1981. [1] It was granted in 1982, meaning that the French patent office had found no evidence of another inventor of the same or similar instrument before him. [1]
However, Australian inventor Geoffrey Rose claims to have taken out a provisional patent with the United Kingdom's patent office in 1975–1976, and his invention may have been shown and used as early as 1976. [2] [3] [4]
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The framed style, which is often created to look like a harp with strings, uses an array of photodiodes or photoresistors inside the upper or lower part of the frame to detect blocking of the laser beams. The framed harp built by Geoffrey Rose in 1975–1976 was an octagonal shape with a 5×5 matrix of laser beams. [2] The lasers can be mounted on the 'neck' or upper side of the harp, shining down, or on the body, shining up. Typically, the lasers used are very low-powered 5 mW red or green lasers, which are considered safe for public interaction by the FDA. Any number of laser beams can be arranged in this type of laser harp, from as few as one or two, up to 32 or more, depending on the capacity of the MIDI controller(s) and software being used. This style can be built in any size, from a lap-sized harp to a room-sized installation, or larger. In this design, only an analog trigger is created by the breaking of the beam (and the DC circuit made by the beam shining on the optic sensor), which is sufficient to trigger any number of events (musical or otherwise) as determined by the data analyser or software in question. In the MIDI controller, this analog DC current interruption is converted to a digital signal, which is then used to trigger many possible events or actions. Some software comes equipped with full wave file editors and synthesizers, and can also trigger video and still imagery via projection units.
This style of laser harp is generally built using a single laser, splitting its beam into an array of beams in parallel or fan arrangement. Playing the actual sound is usually handled by connecting the laser harp to a synthesizer, sampler or computer.
This frameless design is more elaborate than the framed style, relying on reflecting the light back to a single photodiode. The fan of laser beams is actually a single beam scanned into a fan pattern. By matching the timing of the reflected beam, the instrument can determine which beam the player is blocking and sound the corresponding note. Alternative designs use multiple lasers. In these designs, each laser can be independently controlled (pulsed on and off) to simulate playback of prerecorded notes.[ clarification needed ]
Several techniques generate more control data, such as a continuous range of values like those in typical MIDI controllers:
The first of these is relatively inexpensive and straightforward to implement, and can use the same micro-controller that drives the lasers and reads the detectors.
The advantage of a dedicated sensor mechanism is that the instrument can be self-contained, as opposed to requiring a computer to control it with input from an ILDA interface and USB camera. The PC-based approach, however, offers more flexibility and can be constructed with mostly off-the-shelf hardware.
Unframed laser harps benefit from the use of higher-power lasers, as they facilitate easier detection by the sensor system. As the sensor is exposed to all ambient light, it can be swamped by stage lighting behind the artist if the sensitivity is too high. To avoid this, the system can use ambient light sensors to reject ambient light. The player may use white or light-coloured gloves to improve performance by scattering more light off the player's hands to provide the sensor with a higher signal-to-noise ratio with respect to ambient light. Furthermore, the gloves protect the player's skin from potentially hazardous laser radiation and give audiences a more visual impression of the instrument.
The image recognition laser harp is also an unframed design, but uses a high-speed USB camera connected to a laptop computer, instead of a photodiode to detect the reflected light from the hand breaking the beam. The digital picture is analysed by the computer software to determine which beam is broken and send the appropriate MIDI signal back to the synthesizer, which is responsible for creating the sound. The computer also controls the laser projector via an ILDA USB laser controller.
In 2005, a free multicolour laser harp project using an ILDA interface was shared on laser discussion boards and revealed the same year at a German meeting. [5]
Jean-Michel Jarre uses the laser harp in almost every concert, with the exception of Aero and the Oxygene 30th Anniversary Tour. He almost always uses it in the third part of Second Rendez-Vous , but has also used it for tracks like Third Rendez-Vous, Chronologie 3, Calypso 2, Oxygene 7 and Time Machine. The characteristic sound of the laser harp in Jean-Michel Jarre's performances comes from a factory preset on the Elka Synthex synthesizer. [6] [7]
During Jarre's 2009 In-Doors Arena Tour, he commented on his blog that he "should make a few intentional mistakes for people to really understand that it is live". [8] Later the same day, at a concert in Helsinki, the harp "suddenly froze in Rendez Vous 2 for unknown reasons". [9] [10]
Laser harps have appeared in a number of designs. They have also been used in public art installations, such as those by Jen Lewin at the Lincoln Center in 2000 and at Burning Man in 2005 and 2012, [11] [12] as well as those created by Johnny Dwork at the Harmony Festival in 2011, at the Portland Art Museum in 2012, at The Tech Museum of Innovation in 2014, and at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in 2015. [13]
Jean-Michel André Jarre is a French composer, performer and record producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and new-age genres, and is known for organising outdoor spectacles featuring his music, accompanied by vast laser displays, large projections and fireworks.
A MIDI controller is any hardware or software that generates and transmits Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) data to MIDI-enabled devices, typically to trigger sounds and control parameters of an electronic music performance. They most often use a musical keyboard to send data about the pitch of notes to play, although a MIDI controller may trigger lighting and other effects. A wind controller has a sensor that converts breath pressure to volume information and lip pressure to control pitch. Controllers for percussion and stringed instruments exist, as well as specialized and experimental devices. Some MIDI controllers are used in association with specific digital audio workstation software. The original MIDI specification has been extended to include a greater range of control features.
Rendez-vous Houston: A City in Concert was a live performance by musician Jean Michel Jarre amidst the skyscrapers of downtown Houston on the evening of April 5, 1986, coinciding with the release of the Rendez-Vous album. The concert celebrated the 150th anniversary of Houston, Texas and NASA's 25th anniversary. For a period of time, it held a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest outdoor "rock concert" in history, with a estimated of 1.5 million in attendance is the second entry of Jarre in the book. Rendez-vous Houston also celebrated the astronauts of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which had happened only two and a half months earlier. One of Jarre's friends, astronaut Ron McNair, had been killed in the disaster. Ron was originally going to play the saxophone from space during the track "Last Rendez-Vous"; his substitute for the concert was Houston native Kirk Whalum.
Paris La Défense – Une Ville En Concert was a concert held by musician Jean-Michel Jarre on the district of La Défense in Paris on Bastille Day, 14 July, 1990. About 2.5 million people standing in front of the pyramidal stage all the way down to the Arc de Triomphe witnessed this event, setting a new Guinness Book of Records entry for Jarre. The concert was funded by the Mairie de Paris, the Ministry of Culture and a small cluster of high-profile Parisian business concerns. Later, a concert video as well as a photobook of the event were released.
Destination Docklands was an event consisting of two concerts by musician Jean-Michel Jarre on the Royal Victoria Docks, Docklands, London, on Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 October 1988, to coincide with the release of Jarre's new album Revolutions. The concerts were attended by 100,000 people on each night.
Rendez-vous is the eighth studio album by electronic musician and composer Jean-Michel Jarre released on Disques Dreyfus, licensed to Polydor, in 1986. The album art was created by long-time collaborator Michel Granger.
Revolutions is the ninth studio album by electronic musician and composer Jean-Michel Jarre, first released in September 1988. The album reached number 2 in the UK charts, Jarre's best chart position since Oxygène. The Destination Docklands concert in London coincided with the release of the album.
Chronologie is the eleventh studio album by French electronic musician and composer Jean-Michel Jarre, and was released on Disques Dreyfus with license to Polydor in 1993. Chronologie peaked at Number 11 in the UK charts and the album cover art was created by long-time collaborator Michel Granger.
Les Concerts en Chine is a live album by Jean-Michel Jarre, recorded in 1981 and released in 1982 on Disques Dreyfus. It was recorded during Jarre's Concerts in China tour of Autumn 1981, which consisted of five Beijing and Shanghai concerts in China; this was the first time a Western pop artist performed in China after the Cultural Revolution.
The Lyricon is an electronic wind instrument, the first wind controller to be constructed.
A wind controller, sometimes referred to as a wind synthesizer, is an electronic wind instrument. It is usually a MIDI controller associated with one or more music synthesizers. Wind controllers are most commonly played and fingered like a woodwind instrument, usually the saxophone, with the next most common being brass fingering, particularly the trumpet. Models have been produced that play and finger like other acoustic instruments such as the recorder or the tin whistle. The most common form of wind controller uses electronic sensors to convert fingering, breath pressure, bite pressure, finger pressure, and other gesture or action information into control signals that affect musical sounds. The control signals or MIDI messages generated by the wind controller are used to control internal or external devices such as analog synthesizers or MIDI-compatible synthesizers, synth modules, softsynths, sequencers, or even non-instruments such as lighting systems.
The Elka Synthex is a polyphonic analog synthesizer produced by Italian music instrument manufacturer Elka from 1981 to 1985.
Automat is an album of instrumental electronic music composed by the Italian musicians Romano Musumarra and Claudio Gizzi. It was produced in 1977 and released in 1978 by EMI Italy, through its Harvest label.
The Roland AX-Synth is a keytar that is manufactured by Roland Corporation, and was released in late August 2009. This modernized instrument builds on the features of its predecessor, the Roland AX-7. The most notable change is the addition of an internal synthesizer. A UV Black-colored "premium" model called "Black Sparkle" was released in September 2010. The AX-Synth has now been discontinued as well.
Jarre Live, later re-released as Destination Docklands: The London Concert, is a live album by Jean-Michel Jarre, released on 2 October 1989 on Disques Dreyfus. It was recorded during Jarre's Destination Docklands concerts of 1988, which consisted of two London concerts in England; this was the first time the docklands district of London and the river Thames became the scenery for a concert.
The DS-250 was an electronic keyboard manufactured in 1985 by Seiko and was considered a commercial failure. It was capable of generating both digital and additive sounds. It is expandable with two expander units DS-310 and DS-320.
A digital accordion is an electronic musical instrument that uses the control features of a traditional accordion to trigger a digital sound module that produces synthesized or digitally sampled accordion sounds or, in most instruments, a range of non-accordion sounds, such as orchestral instruments, pipe organ, piano, guitar, and so on. Digital accordions typically encode and transmit key presses and other input as Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) messages. Most digital accordions need to be plugged into a keyboard amplifier or PA system to hear their sounds.
Bernard Szajner is a French composer, musical theorist, visual artist. He is credited with the invention of the laser harp, which he patented.
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