Forget about lugging around a tuba when you can convert an iPhone into a musical instrument
University of Michigan students on Dec. 9 will perform a unique concert: they will play instruments on their smartphones that they built in class.
The class, dubbed Building a Mobile Phone Ensemble, is taught by Georg Essl, an assistant profesor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Music, Theatre & Dance who was part of a team that a few years back enabled use of microphones as wind sensors. This technique is used by the iPhone app Ocarina, which turns the device into an old-fashioned flute. Other smartphone components, including the touch screen, wireless sensor and accelerometer, can be used to tranform the device into an instrument via touching and tilting and blowing.
“The mobile phone is a very nice platform for exploring new forms of musical performance,” Essl said in a statement. “We’re not tethered to the physics of traditional instruments. We can do interesting, weird, unusual things. This kind of technology is in its infancy, but it’s a hot and growing area to use iPhones for artistic expression.”
In fact, a colleague of mine was strumming a Droid “guitar” earlier this week while working on a slideshow of the year’s best Android apps.
Check out this video for more info on the University of Michigan effort.
