The body as instrument: tissue conducted multimodal audio-tactile spatial music.

We describe early progress in exploring the compositional potential for multimodal music of a multi-transducer audio-plus-vibrotactile apparatus, utilising ambisonics encoding; the tactile component is an incidental by-product, carried by the same transducers. An elicitation exercise with one hundred uninstructed listeners who gave responses in their own words was conducted and responses were transcribed and aggregated to identify emergent descriptive themes. The tactile components of the stimuli assume greater importance in the perceptual experience than originally considered, suggesting compositional opportunities in utilizing additive effects of audio-plus-tactile signals. This could engender assistive technologies for those with some degree of conductive hearing loss, ameliorating music-deprivation and addressing quality-of-life (QoL) issues.n/