The sound of touch

All people have experienced hearing sounds produced when they touch and manipulate different materials. We know what it will sound like to bang our fist against a wooden door, or to crumple a piece of newspaper. We can imagine what a coffee mug will sound like if it is dropped onto a concrete floor. But our wealth of experience handling physical materials does not typically produce much intuition for operating a new electronic instrument, given the inherently arbitrary mapping from gesture to sound.