DIS 2 Final Project Summer Term 2005
First Idea Implementation Difficulties Future Work Patch
FIDGETING MUSIC
Manfred
Großerohde, Maurice Misse,
Raja Gumienny
Fidgeting normally can not be combined with playing an instrument. You need to be calm and patient. But with our instrument you can use your surplus power and create fancy sounds.
The musician
stands in front of a camera with colored disks fixed on his hands. The position
of these disks controls the pitch of notes, the color controls the instrument.
Eventually two or more musicians can use the instrument at the same time, playing
a song together.
We used the Max object Cyclops to handle the camera input. Inside
a grid with 20x20 blocks we placed a couple of zones, divided into three parts:
one part at the left and one part at the right of the person playing the instrument.
The third part is placed at the bottom of the video frame where the player is
standing.
Each part represents a different instrument and responds to another color.
If the player raises his knees wearing blue schooners a kind of drum occurs. We only used one pitch because we considered this to be sufficient to represent a beat. There are eight zones to ensure that the player moves the schooners to at least one of them.
At each side of the player we placed 24 zones. They are structured in six rows, each row representing a different pitch.
The zones at right part of the video frame react to the pink disk the user is holding in his hands. Six pitches of a piano can be recognized. The highest pitch is played at the top zones, the lowest at the lowest zones. Again we provided four zones for each pitch to make it easier for the user to hit a tone.
The zones at the left part react to the green disk. Everything works in the same way, except for the instrument. This is a kind of horn.
When we started testing the first, basic version of our instrument, we considered it to be too difficult to use. In that version we provided only one zone per pitch on each side. Thus it was hard to hit the intended pitch. In addition the musician had to pay attention always to keep the disks in the correct angle towards the camera. If you change the angle too much, the color of the disks will appear differently and cyclops can not match it to the stored color.
Therefore playing that version of our instrument did not make much fun.
To improve it we increased the scope of the stored color in order to make cyclops
match incoming colors even if they are a bit brighter or darker than the sample.
But finding the best scope was not easy: making it too big will lead to the
problem that cyclops matches nearly every color and the instrument will be playing
all the time.
To make it easier to hit a certain pitch we put four zones in a row for each
pitch. Primarily we only did this to make it easier for us to test the instrument.
We planned to change this later because it leads to the affect that every time
you try playing a certain note, the instrument will play several notes successively.
But we like the sound this creates and playing the instrument makes much more
fun this way. Therefore we decided to keep it like that. Even if it restricts
the possibilities of the instrument.
FIDGETING MUSIC is a good idea for hand and knee interaction using the pink/green disks to control sounds such as piano and drums with every gesture.
Here are a few adjustments we would like to add to our project in the future:
- We would like to have the ability to create melodies by moving the pink/green disk up and down. This allows the user to dance to his own creation and along with other melodies created by the blue schooners gestures. Each zone will represent different melodies and pitches.
-We would like to add volume control to the movement of the disks. Upward gestures would increase the volume, while downward gestures decrease the volume.
-The blue schooners will be used to select additional
instruments. For example, a left knee gesture will select a trumpet, while a
right knee gesture can select a piano. Here we thought about using only one
pitch with the instruments.
To download the MAX/MSP file click here