Martin Kaltenbrunner has published a very nice overview of tangible musical interfaces, focusing on table-top controllers, such as music tables and audio building blocks.

Projects featured include:

• Audiopad – a composition and performance instrument for electronic music which tracks the positions of objects on a tabletop surface and converts their motion into music.
• Audio d-touch – a set of 3 applications for music composition and performance: the Augmented Stave, the Tangible Drum Machine and the Physical Sequencer.
• The Music Table – an experimental composing system that provides a tactile and visual representation of music that can be easily manipulated to make new musical patterns.
• The Circular Optical Object Locator is a collaborative and cooperative music-making device.
• The ISS cube – a surround sound mixer that tracks the position of several physical objects on a tabletop surface to provide the user with an intuitive way of creating a non-linear soundscape.
• AudioCube – an installation that allows a group of users to create their own three-dimensional soundscape.
• Bach Blocks – a game that encourages children to create totally original music. The blocks are physical analogs to musical notes with color associated to pitch and block size to beat length.
• Chessynthesis is a performance project. It consists in a classical chess game, with a chessboard and 32 pieces, but a captation system analyzes the position and the evolution of the gameplay, and transcode it to sound.

Many more are featured at the site.

via USO on Twitter