Tanaka (2006) · Couchman, Beasley & Pfordresher (2012)
Also: Karlsen (2011) · Emerson & Egermann (2018) · Schiavio et al. (2022) · Blaine & Fels (2003) · Montesinos et al. (2025)
The term comes from music education, where it covers “both individual and collective ways of interacting with music” (Karlsen 2011).
Attribution. Tanaka: “The satisfaction of a musician lies in the sense he has of his own actions in the resulting music” (2006). Couchman et al. define the experience of agency as “the performer’s subjective experience that he or she has caused the auditory events that follow his or her actions” (2012), and find that altering the pitch or timing of feedback lowers it.
Perceptible causality. Emerson and Egermann find that “a lack of perceptible causality does have a negative impact on ratings of DMI performances” (2018) — measured on audiences rather than performers.
Levels. Schiavio et al. (2022) treat control over sound production as “an essential first step” that does not by itself amount to shaping a musical outcome.
The trade-off. Blaine and Fels (2003) observe that collaborative interfaces restrict musical control so novices can take part. Montesinos et al. (2025) state it as two design principles in tension for Tubularium: simplicity for untrained users, against “a sense of agency and ownership of the sounds generated”.
Used here as the individual half of the agency question.