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Music Tech Monday: Imogen Heap’s digital musical gloves

Music made through hand gestures

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A while back, Imogen Heap created musical gloves that responded to hand gestures. In 2011, these gloves were debuted at a TED talk where Imogen Heap revealed how these gloves take a totally new approach to making music. Then, this technology was truly one of a kind. The musical gloves, Mi.Mu, spurred much excitement and enthusiasm as people wanted a pair for themselves. The project started crowdfunding on Kickstarter to commercialize this product and spread this tech around to musicians around the world. Users can generate their own spur-of-the-moment tunes just by their hands’ gesticulations while wearing Mi.Mu.

The gloves themselves are exceptionally cutting-edge. They contain wireless microphones, a magnetometer, a gyroscope, haptic motors, various sensors, a wireless board, and an accelerometer. Mi.Mu then processes the hands’ movements and emits sounds covering various effects and instruments. They contain a 32-channel I/O, low-latency Wi-Fi, and a programmable RGB LED.

This wearable technology uses the body’s organic movements to produce sound.  The effects include recording loops by opening your hand, manipulating volume, sound filtering by putting your palms together and moving them accordingly, and rocking out by making a trumpet playing-like gesture.

The gloves’ integrated sensors save the data and process it via Wi-Fi to your computer software (like Garageband, Pro Tools, Logic, etc) that coagulates the music together, “maps the glove data to musical control signals,” and assembles the pieces recorded to make a full song.
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The Kickstarter page for this campaign states that Mi.Mu's goal is “to break down the barriers between musicians and machines, and between performers and audiences.” So far, $108,242 has been raised out of its $335,000 end goal with 19 days still left to donate.

Story via Kickstarter, Mashable

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