"No Strings Attached", Input/Output, ME Departments, June 2006

input/output

by Harry Hutchinson, Executive Editor

No Strings Attached

So many computer-based miracles are in the works—computers that can feel and see, computers that can read your mood. All you have to do is look at this month's Computing department for examples like that. But what about a system that lets you sound like a rock star? It's something to make the headbangers of the world stand up and take notice.

A new company has been formed to commercialize the virtual air guitar, which grew out of a university project for a museum exhibit. What's more, the whole idea comes from the air guitar capital of the world, Finland.

A crew associated with the Helsinki University of Technology developed the virtual air guitar for a special music-themed exhibit at the nearby Heureka Science Center. It was such a hit that it's part of the permanent collection.

Unlike a conventional air guitar, with which a fan pantomimes his appreciation of a recording, the virtual air guitar lets the player generate the music.

Strumming an air: Webcam, orange gloves, and gesture analysis give a new twist to the old air guitar.

In a paper presented to the Audio Engineering Society a couple of years ago, the developers, including Aki Kanerva, the chief executive of the Virtual Air Guitar Co., described different methods of playing a guitar that isn't there. One was to use sensing gloves to track the player's hand movements. Another was to use a video camera and gesture-recognition software, which is what the system at Heureka does.

The performer dons orange gloves, which the computer system is programmed to follow. Visual information captured by a Webcam passes through gesture-recognition software and then a "musical intelligence" module. A physical sound model generates musical phrases that simulate a Fender Stratocaster guitar.

Mikko Myllykoski, the museum's experience director, told us, "The gloves may be of any color which the camera system is programmed to recognize. Orange was chosen because people seldom wear orange."

He added, "A warm-blooded person like myself can play the virtual air guitar without the gloves: My hands are sometimes reddish in a way that is close enough to the orange color."

The player can use a foot pedal to choose between two modes of play—power chords and solo riffs. The solo mode, Myllykoski said, sounds like Jimi Hendrix.

The museum exhibit runs on the Linux operating system. There had been plans to develop a Windows version, but now the virtual air guitar is headed for Xbox or Playstation.

Kanerva said the video game will be different from the museum exhibit and more like a party game. In the museum, the aim was to let visitors interact with the system immediately. With a video game, the purpose is to engage players. "We want to give the user something he can practice and become good at," Kanerva said.

Kanerva expects it to carry a price in the normal range for console video games, between $50 and $60, exclusive of the Webcam. The company plans to have it in stores in time for Christmas of 2007.

The Finns seem to have an affinity for the air guitar. Their country is home not only to the Virtual Air Guitar Co., but also to the annual Air Guitar World Championships, held every year in association with the Music Video Festival in the city of Oulu.

The current air guitar world champ, by the way, is Michael "The Destroyer" Heffels of the Netherlands. When he isn't pantomiming to Daft Punk selections, Heffels performs with a band called the Filthy Red Horse, in which he claims to be a rejuvenated 80-year-old named Dick Purple.

The 2006 Oulu festival and competition are scheduled for Sept. 6 through 10, according to the festival Web site, where we also came across an arcane piece of wisdom. The organizers of the festival write that, "According to a traditional Finnish saying, life is smiling like a herring in a pint of sour milk."

We're still trying to figure that one out.