Wearable Musical Instruments

I've been working on a group of wearable music instruments for over a year off and on. Although I have spent most of the time trying to figure out everything from haptic feedback to wiring, I am happy to say that I am finally ready to start making the first prototype.

The project started as a request from Cap Blackard for a "music suit" one that he could use to make music while dancing. Needless to say, such a request is deceptive in many regards. From a meta standpoint there was the issue of what gesture or action would cause what result. Technical limitations narrowed down the virtually limitless amount of possible user interfaces, which was helpful, otherwise it would still be an idea floating around forever. The result of this, for now, is that I have three distinct instrument ideas, and the parts to make them.

The basic setup that I'm working with is going to have three seperate parts. Following the path of a single note, we start with one of the three different instruments, the source of the raw data. The next step is the Arduino which takes the data, interprets it, and then sends it along to the Zigbee radio. From here the radio broadcasts from the wearer to the base station's own Zigbee, which in turn passes it to the base station Arduino. Now that the data is in the base station it is either turned into MIDI commands, or is output via an audio circuit (for rather specific effects). From there the computer can use the MIDI notes to play virtually any traditional instrument.

So that's the basic outline of the project. I'll leave off any description of the instruments until a later post.