The objective of the iPercussion project is to develop a set of tools for creating musical instruments with any surface or simple object, such as table, wall, metallic plate, wood board, etc. The idea is to transform such physical objects and surfaces into virtual control interfaces, by using motion capture technologies to track the gestures made by the musician, either with the hands, mallets or sticks. Those new musical interfaces, freely reconfigurable, will be used to control standard sound modules or effect processors, by defining zones on their surface and assigning them musical commands, such as the triggering of notes or the modulation of parameters. The system will be useful either to create musical controllers that produce no sound (the sounds are generated by external modules connected via MIDI or OSC), or to create hybrid electro-acoustic instruments, by using the object itself as a sound source (for instance, a metallic plate or a cymbal). In this case, the sound is transformed and shaped by an effect processor, whose parameters are controlled by the gestures of the musician interacting with the interface. This way it will be possible to modulate the sound according to the location of the hit, for instance, similar to way the sound of a drum differs in the centre or close to the edge.

See the Mapping Editor and the Multi-Touch Everywhere pages for more informations on the practical outcomes of the project!

The iPercussion project is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.