The satisfying thud of a bass drum sounds every time Gil Weinberg strikes thin air with his iPhone. A pal nearby swings his Nokia smartphone back and forth, adding a rippling bass line. A third phone-wielding friend sprinkles piano and guitar phrases on top. Weinberg's trio are using software that turns ordinary cellphones into musical instruments. Commuters regularly assailed by tinny recorded music played on other passengers' phones might not share his enthusiasm, but air guitarists and would-be drummers will probably be delighted. Smart gesture-recognition software will democratise music-making as never before. The software, dubbed ZoozBeats and launched this week, monitors a phone's motion and plays a corresponding sound. For example, you might play a rhythm based on a snare drum by beating the air with the phone as if it's a drumstick.
Or you could strum with it to play a sequence of guitar chords. The software runs on a wide range of phones because it uses many different ways to sense gestures. The obvious way is to use the accelerometers built into gadgets like the Apple iPhone and Nokia N96 smartphone. But ZoozBeats can also trigger sounds when the view through a phone's camera lens changes rapidly, or generate a beat or bassline from simple taps on the mobile's microphone. Of course, people who aren't well versed in music-making are more likely to make an infernal racket than beautiful melodies, so ZoozBeats incorporates an algorithm called Musical Wizard to make sure their musical decisions are harmonious. ZoozBeats comes with instruments for three types of music: rock, techno and hip hop. It also allows users to produce vocal effects by singing into the phone and will be downloadable in two versions. One of these will be for solo use, the other a Bluetooth networkable version that supports jamming by groups of people - using the Musical Wizard to keep everybody's input melodious.More information:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026816.200-cellphone-app-will-get-air-guitarists-wailing.html