Deaf musicians tend to favour acoustic instruments – quite often percussion –which produce a distinct physical feedback from vibration generated by the instrument, alongside more subtle visual clues. However, using electronic instruments, they often find it more difficult to resolve some of the characteristics of sound, such as pitch and harmonics.

Richard Burn proposes the creation of a new musical interface that will combine haptic and visual forms of feedback to create a more inclusive experience for deaf people. Alongside vibrations, visual indictors will appear on a digital display that collectively form a ‘sonic fingerprint’ when an instrument is played, highlighting different components that make up the sound.