Scientists Create Air Guitar T-shirt

onco_p53 writes "Australian scientists have invented a T-shirt that allows air guitarists to play actual music as they strum the air. The shirt has sensors in each elbow and sleeves to detect and interpret the air guitarist's arm movements — one arm chooses chords and the other strums imaginary strings. The gestures are then connected wirelessly to guitar audio samples to generate the music. Check out the video!"

Scientists?

Sounds more like a job for engineers. Perhaps they just meant Boffins in general?

Major Vs Minor

I'll probably be modded as flamebait but I don't think that shirt was actually controlling that sound. I think this video was intended to be a viral internet video to garner venture capital for developing that kind of technology.

I assume this is intended to only play power chords and on top of that there is no way the machine can determine if you intend the third to be major or minor in the chord. Which is interesting because in the video, the chord changes from major to minor with no change in the performer. That's fine, let's then assume that you can select a key and it will adhere to the chords in that key.

At several points in the video, he strums by flicking his wrist instead of moving his whole arm. That's pretty standard for guitarists but doesn't explain how the shirt (with sensor fibres in the elbow) would recognize the motion. Also, near the end, the guitar that I assume he is playing strums multiple times without him doing anything.

I read the article and, if it has been developed, this short short video did not do a good job of showing it off or selling me on it actually working. I'd rather see an average guy just messing around with it with no back track. I don't care if it's not perfect, it's just that I could make that video with crappy acid trip effects in my basement and my friend on guitar watching me move my arms.

Re:Major Vs Minor

I"m not saying I completely trust this either, but:

At several points in the video, he strums by flicking his wrist instead of moving his whole arm. That's pretty standard for guitarists but doesn't explain how the shirt (with sensor fibres in the elbow) would recognize the motion. Also, near the end, the guitar that I assume he is playing strums multiple times without him doing anything.

Grab your right elbow with your left hand, flick your left wrist. There is movement there, and it is different than when you movce your whole arm. It's possible to differentiate between the two I suspect, maybe not easy, but possible.

Re:Major Vs Minor

Grab your right elbow with your left hand, flick your left wrist.

Flicking my left wrist while my right elbow is in my left hand just makes my right hand swing violently, hitting me in the head. Nice trick!

other problems...

Aren't there more important things 'scientists' could be working on?

It's made out of the wrong material

It needs to be made out of Spandex to truly make it rock.

and people thought...

Bill and Ted's vision of the future was unrealistic and yet here we have another step towards it.

Re:and people thought...

I can just see these guys standing around the office, saying "when in the future we get some venture capital, we have to remember to come back to the present and give it to ourselves.... now!"

"Um.... now!"

"Nnnnnnnnnnow!"

Fabric choice

What if it shrinks in the laundry -- would it require retuning? How then do you deal with armpit stains? Honestly, I don't see how these guys will get venture funding without a good answer to these basic questions.

Then I want a STFU glove

...with a 1-finger GUI. Mimes are supposed to be silent, dammit.

What's printed on the T-shirt?

"NO STAIRWAY"

Air girlfriend

Impress your air girlfriend!...

Western Civilization has...

just jumped the shark. It's all down hill from here.

What's next?

How about inventing a pair of jeans that reads Nietzsche? or maybe a hat that throws insults and racial jokes at people? perhaps the scientists can help invent shoes that know where you're going? that would be nice...

wow,

if it was true it would be cool as hell, but man that was fake

Nothing to see here, please move on

Defeats the Purpose

You still need to know how to perform the correct movements in order to create something that sounds close to the original song. The whole purpose of air guitar is that you don't need to know anything about playing guitar and any mistakes you make aren't usually apparent.

Wouldn't it have been easier to...

just buy a damn Strat and a Marshall, and learn the A, G and D chords?

You wanna be guitar heroes, and you don't even wanna put the work in on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBiJ-K0IpDA [youtube.com]

or try it with gloves

I had heard something like this before... just found it. Here's a group that has a virtual air guitar [tml.hut.fi] that works by wearing gloves. They limit you to 4 chords so you can't play anything "wrong." There is also a separate solo mode.

If this is real...

If this is real, someone get this guy a job at Harmonix.

Be excellent to each other

STATION!

2 products in one

Combine this with the shirt that has the equalizer bars on it, so you can show people you are rocking out. Personally, after seeing the pics / videos of both shirts, I believe the equalizer shirt exists. The air guitar shirt I see too many erros in the video. Playing notes that an elbow sensor couldn't pick up, and playing notes on its own to name 2.

Artbots

Artist can do this sort of thing also. I went to an art show this weekend ans saw a xylophone controlled by a camera. It played when people walked in front of it. (picture [flickr.com] video [youtube.com]). I think that this sort of thing is pretty interesting and I am looking forward to the next things that are thought up. I also tend to believe that the most interesting things are thought up by individuals. Large corporation do ok making things but individuals are, maybe, a little freer to take ideas to an extreme and not worry about appealing to millions to recoup an investment.

Customization?

Does it go to 11? Ours go to 11.

But won't it still sound bad?

Isn't the point of Air Guitar that someone who can't play guitar mimics someone who can?

Interesting, but doesn't go far enough...

What they need to do is add exceptionally precise Ir/motion sensors to the shirt, so it can see exactly where your arms *and* fingers are, and play appropriately. Don't forget the small backpack-sized computing device to interpret all of that on the fly fast enough to keep up. ;) Hey, one can dream.

They should call it the Tenacious T

and let Jack Black do the commercials

cafe press

You don't need to be a scientist to create a T-shirt, you can just place an order at Cafe Press...

Tambourine version

There's also a tambourine version (from the same research group): http://www.csiro.au/csiro/content/file/pfka,,.html [csiro.au] The video looks more realistic than the air-guitar one imo.

Marketing Ideas

They should sell this with the slogan, "Be excellent to each other."

"Scientists Create Air Guitar T-shirt"

After reading the title

Scientists Create Air Guitar T-shirt

my first thought was: "How can they tell?"

FPS integration

I would think this would be more impressive as an interface to a virtual environment like Doom/Half-Life/Quake/Everquest, etc. Add something to monitor head movement and it would really start to shine.

what's that in

your shirt? Or, are you just happy to see me?

(Sorry just had to strum that note...)

The 1990's called...

...and they want their VPL DataGlove back...

Alright - I realize this isn't a glove interface, but what is it with geeks, "virtual" environments (including those in the head), and air guitar? Arguably, from everything I have read about the history of VPL, the DataGlove's first raison-d'etra (probably munged that!) was so that Jaron Lanier (and a buddy?) could play "air guitar" using their Atari ST and MIDI (google around on "VPL" and "DataGlove" if you don't believe me). Since that time, tons of people, companies, and bands have experimented in one form or another to bring the "air guitar" to life.

I don't play the guitar, nor do I know how, and I won't say I have strummed a bit in the air, too - everyone has, I think. However, I know that if I really wanted to play guitar, no amount of movements "in air" will ever be able to recreate what happens with a real guitar. At best, I will get an approximation of (likely) samples of somebody else's real performance.

Finally, I must admit I haven't read the article - but I would be willing to bet that there are 50/50 odds that the article mentions how the technology could be used to "read" sign language by monitoring the movements of the arms (yet another thing the DataGlove was touted as a useful thing to do with it, and yet another that gets hauled out year-after-year).

I guess what I am tired of is all of this rehash of stuff we already know how to do - let's quit playing and demonstrating dead-end uses for VR (and AR) technology, and let's start using it for real world tasks!

Historic

This will undoubtedly go down in the history books as the greatest invention of the 21st Century. In the future, people will design cities around these things.

This would go great with...

This would go great with the T-Qualizer http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/searchSite.do?Query =t-qualizer&x=0&y=0 [iwantoneofthose.com]