The T-Stick was developed and built in the IDMIL by Joseph Malloch, in collaboration with composer D. Andrew Stewart and performers Fernando Rocha and Xenia Pestova. The physical input device can sense where and how much of its surface is touched by the performer, as well as tilting, shaking, squeezing and twisting gestures. Unlike most digital musical instruments, the T-Sticks exist as a family, with soprano, alto, tenor, and bass members.
The T-Stick is intended to be an “expert” musical interface: engaging to new users, allowing virtuosic playing, and “worth practicing” in that practice time results in increased skill. The T-Stick has been performed and demonstrated many times in Canada, Brazil, Italy, and the USA.
The Mobile Gesture Mabed Musical Intrument uses gesture input on Nokia N95 as input to MIDI instruments or directly to phone sound generator.
The MoGMI project explores ways of enabling the mobile phone to become a musical instrument for naïve users. Using the 3 dimensional accelerometer on the Nokia N95 users can record musical pieces using physical gestures. We developed an application that allowed them to select one to three musical instruments and create music with them. An additional application lets users play a drum-set. This initial study explores which accelerometer axis mapping model is preferred by users. Do they prefer a model in which each of the motion axes are mapped to a different instrument or one in which the motion affects volume, pitch and attack of a single instrument. Results show that subjects preferred the three axis model in which every axis is mapped to a different dimension of music generation (attack, amplitude, and pitch). This mapping was deemed better by subjects over simpler or more complicated mapping models in three of five dimensions (easier to learn, produces “nicer” music, and in how easy it is to understand the relationship between gestures performed and the music that is subsequently generated).
Keith McMillen writes of the K-Bow —
“Reliable, practical stage-worthy sensor bows for the string family have not been available to experimenters, composers and performers. Now a complete series of bows for stringed instruments are presented. The bows provide hair tension, grip pressure, X-Y-Z acceleration, relative X-Y position wrt to the bridge and the tilt or twist of the violin bow. A Max based application using custom RFCOMM objects provides processed gesture outputs as well as a 2 axis trainable gesture extractor.”
Langdon Crawford: designer,performer
William Fastenow: consultant, tester,performer
Laura Sinnott: tester, performer
Langdon Crawford writes —
“The MIDI Airguitar instrument is comprised of two hand-held units. A device fits in each hand. there are buttons on the surface for the fingers and thumbs and accelerometers inside to detect motion. Airguitar type guestures are used to control the sound (of guitar synths among other sounds).”
YouTube video of a few instruments controlled by the MIDI Airguitar
YouTube slide show of the building of a MIDI Airguitar and a few photos of the Airband from 2006.
