Mi.Mu gloves for Music beats!

Grammy-winning British artist Imogen Heap says she's always been a bit frustrated by not being able to navigate computers and mixing boards with the same fluidity other musicians can play more traditional instruments. To solve this, she's "joined forces with the nerd underworld, creating musical gloves using new sensor technology allowing me to compose and perform music with computers in an intuitive way."


The first report on the gloves is back in 2011 when Heap debuted them at a TED conference. Now, the artist and her team of engineers and scientists are seeking funding for their "Mi.Mu gloves" through a Kickstarter campaign seeking to raise £200,000 (about $330,000 USD) to bring the technology to the masses.

Mind controlled music software: make music with your brain!

Scientists from the University of Malta just create a software for making music that is controlled by the mind.

A Brain Computer Interface (BCI) system is a communication system where a person has the ability to communicate with a computer through his or her brain signals rather than using the peripheral nerves and muscles. A BCI system effectively allows for the conversion of patterns of electrical brain activity into commands to control specific equipment. BCI technology relies on the acquisition of electrical signals generated by billions of neurones inside the brain. The electrical fluctuations that arise from these neurones reach the scalp where they can be detected and recorded by means of non-invasive metal electrodes through a process known as electroencephalography (EEG). In a BCI system EEG data is recorded from the human subject and this is then processed to extract reliable features which can then be mapped into computer based commands such as moving a cursor on a screen or selecting from sets of letters.

The commands control the music player without the need of any physical movement; the user just needs to look at the right box. The program figures out where the user is looking through his or her brain patterns, allowing the music player to be controlled. 

Just amazing!

Ice cream that plays music when licked!

Playing with your food is generally frowned upon, but very little is said about playing music with your food. Artists Emilie Baltz and Carla Diana are exploring exactly that concept. Together with the musician Arone Dyer of Buke&Gase.

Their work Lickestra is a musical performance in which ice cream is used as the instrument. It uses cones with embedded capacitive sensors. The ice cream sits within the cones and, when licked, causes the sensors to send an electronic signal to an attached Arduino board. The Arduino, in turn, feeds a computer on which a library of melody loops and beats is stored, and that controls the subsequent audio output.

Playing with the experience from tongue to taste, the performance presents a series of conductive ice creams that trigger various baselines and tones when licked.

From improvisation to orchestration, eater becomes performer as the primitive act of licking reaches beyond flavor perception to become an instrument for play.

Lickestra lasts until all the ice cream is licked!

Goodbye Paco de Lucia!

Today has died in Mexico, at the age of 66, reportedly of a heart attack while playing with his children on a beach, the great flamenco guitar player Paco de Lucia. 

The whole music world lost one of the best musician ever!

Paco de Lucia was born Francisco Sanchez Gomez on 21 December 1947, the son of flamenco guitarist Antonio Sanchez, who was of Gypsy origin. His stage name he took in honour of his mother, Lucia Gomes.

It is believed he had played the guitar from the age of five.

"My family grew up with the Gypsies," the guitarist stated in a 1994 article in Guitar Player.

"My father and all my brothers played guitar, so before I picked it up, before I could speak, I was listening. Before I started to play, I knew every rhythm of the flamenco. I knew the feeling and the meaning of the music, so when I started to play, I went directly to the sound I had in my ear."

At the age of 18 he recorded his first album in Madrid.

He was one of the first flamenco guitarists who has also successfully crossed over into other genres of music such as classical and jazz. De Lucía was noted for his innovation and colour in harmony and his remarkable dexterity, technique, strength and fluidity in his right hand, capable of executing extremely fast and fluent picados.

Rest in peace Paco! And let the angels hear the sound your guitar!

Digit-al Music...intuitive gloves to make music

Now that's digit-al music: 'Intuitive' gloves allow wearer to make noises using hand gestures

Engineering students at Cornell University, New York, made the gloves that use a magnetic tracking system and can create virtually any sound

The Aura enables wearers to make music using expressive and intuitive hand gestures so that music lessons are not required.Raising and lowering gloved hands controls pitch and spreading them apart increases volume. 

By closing the fingers, the Aura wearer activates flex sensors and muffles the sound, while twisting the hands adds distortion that makes the noises produced sound extra futuristic. 

Through an interface created by Mr Ndubuisi, hand positions are converted to signals in the universal Midi language for electronic instruments and fed to a synthesiser.

The future is now!

Sebastian...ear training software for music teachers...

Last week, Crosmer unveiled his solution to ear training, called Sebastian. It's named after Sebastian Bach, a well-trained ear himself.

The desktop program, available for Mac, PC and Linux, uses an on-screen keyboard and walks users through a series of exercises in which Sebastian plays two notes. The program gives students a visual depiction of where the first note is on the keyboard and then they must guess where the second note is.  The difficulty continues to increase as it goes from single notes to chords to scales. The program also identifies areas where students are struggling and repeats those exercises while weeding out ones they ace.

Noisli...the sounds of Nature

"A moderate level of noise the equivalent of the background buzz of conversation prompts more-creative thought" The Wall Street Journal.
Have you ever wanted to fell somewhere else, in a very natural place surrounded by the sound of nature?

Noisli is a fantastic background noise and colour generator ideal for working and relaxing. Plus Text Editor for distraction-free writing with plain text and Markdown support.
It includes many high-quality sounds to help you focus while working, relief anxiety or to just relax while reading or before going to sleep.
Noisli also provides a colour changing background, bringing to you the healthy benefits of the chromotherapy.

It is just amazing!

Ototo - Music form everything

Ototo is an all-in-one musical invention kit which allows you to make an instrument any way you want. Ototo is now available on Kickstarter. Created by Yuri Suzuki and Mark McKeague experts in product design, interaction design, music and technology.

Dentaku - Ototo from Broadway on Vimeo.