Looking to use your iPhone as a musical instrument and get credit for it? Well, there's a course for that.
iPhones are being used as musical instruments in a new course at the University of Michigan.
The students -- who design, build and play instruments on their
smartphones -- will perform at a public concert on Dec. 9. The concert
is free and open to the public.
Building a Mobile Phone Ensemble, believed to be the first such
course in the world, is taught by Georg Essl, a computer scientist and
musician who has been driving the development of mobile phones as
musical instruments.
Several years ago, Essl and his colleagues were the first known to use
the microphone as a wind sensor -- a tactic that enables popular iPhone
apps such as the Ocarina. Ocarina essentially turns the phone into an
ancient type of flute. Essl is an assistant professor in the Department
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Music,
Theatre & Dance.
"The mobile phone is a very nice platform for exploring new forms of
musical performance," Essl said. "We're not tethered to the physics of
traditional instruments. We can do interesting, weird, unusual things.
This kind of technology is in its infancy, but it's a hot and growing
area to use iPhones for artistic expression."