University uses iPhone as musical instrument

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 04 December 2009, 21:44 IST   |    15 Comments
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University uses iPhone as musical instrument
New York: Students at the University of Michigan are learning to design, build and play instruments on their Apple iPhones, as they prepare for a public performance planned for December 9. The University said that it believed the course, 'Building a Mobile Phone Ensemble,' is a first of its kind. It is taught by Georg Essl, a Computer Scientist and Musician who has worked on developing mobile phones and musical instruments. Essl and his colleagues began using the microphone as a wind sensor a few years ago, which enabled iPhone apps such as the Ocarina that essentially turns the phone into an ancient flute-like wind instrument. "The mobile phone is a very nice platform for exploring new forms of musical performance," Essl said in a statement, reports Reuters. "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." Essl said that to build an instrument on an iPhone, students program the device to play back information it receives from one of its multitude of sensors as sound. "The touch-screen, microphone, GPS, compass, wireless sensor and accelerometer can all be transformed so that when you run your finger across the display, blow air into the mic, tilt or shake the phone, for example, different sounds emanate," he said.

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