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Student Orchestra Performs Music With iPhones

Posted by samzenpus on from the there's-a-symphonic-app-for-that dept.

A course at the University of Michigan ends with a live concert featuring students using iPhones as instruments. “Building a Mobile Phone Ensemble“ teaches students to code musical instruments for the iPhone, using the Apple-provided software-development kit. Georg Essl, assistant professor of computer science and music, says, "What’s interesting is we blend the whole process. We start from nothing. We teach the programming of iPhones for multimedia stuff, and then we teach students to build their own instruments.”

6 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Not cool musically (IMO)... but... by CannonballHead · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... it does seem like a cool project for learning to program a multimedia app for the iPhone.

    That said, why is it that people say things like this?

    You could get skilled with the piano after years of practice, but imagine how good you’d be at playing an instrument you invented.

    Yippee, you "invented" an instrument (what?). That means nothing, actually, in terms of skill, since a lot of skill at playing ... traditional, instruments, at any rate, has to do more with finger dexterity and the like, not knowing how the instrument works. Many skilled instrumental repair shops cannot play the instrument amazingly, even if they know more about it than the players that come in.

    I kinda get the feeling that "electronic" instruments are seen as replacing traditional/acoustic instruments, at least in the minds of geeks/young people. I disagree. :)

    1. Re:Not cool musically (IMO)... but... by wizardforce · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I kinda get the feeling that "electronic" instruments are seen as replacing traditional/acoustic instruments, at least in the minds of geeks/young people. I disagree. :)

      Anything that can be recorded by electronic means can in principle be duplicated in performances. Physical instruments are limited by physics and their design. Electronic instruments don't have such a narrow limitation as the types of notes available are not dictated by the materials and shape of the electronic instrument. Having said that, the video its self was rather underwhelming. Just variations on a single tone. The "instruments" were programmed by the students themselves which is what is novel about them; Not so much the fact that the performance its self was disappointing.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
  2. Annoying factor bigger than geek factor by FlynnMP3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hearing 5 minutes of tonal variations of sine waves (assumed since I could only take 3 minutes of it) is just plain annoying.

    Now if it had been the temporal overlapping of many different frequencies of tuning forks, that would be at least more interesting as it would take some skill during the performance.

    1. Re:Annoying factor bigger than geek factor by fbjon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think you're stretching the word 'variation' way too far.

      --
      True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
  3. Big let down... by Temujin_12 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    At first I was excited and expected different iPhones set to play sounds of different instruments along with a piece that had some sort of melody or at least interesting harmonics. 5 minutes of variations on a sine wave was underwhelming.

    Conceptually this is cool, but ultimately was a let down.

    --
    Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
  4. I'd rather see a guy play a song with just hands by phoenixdna · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I REALLY do not see how this video is impressive at all. They play the same note and gyrate around. WOW!! Somebody call John Tesh. And why does it take like 20 people to demonstrate the 'One Note Instrument' on the iphone? Think maybe 5 people would have been enough? I expected these people to be playing different instruments (like in a real orchestra). So that they work together to play a song. Maybe a couple of group of woodwind iPhones, percussion iPhones, and some brass iPhones. When everyone is playing the same thing, then you might have an orchestra that would draw a 10 people crowd at the mall.