Rockin' science: CSIRO researcher Richard Helmer demonstrates the shirt that means anyone can be a guitarist.
Photo: Wayne Taylor
Ben Doherty
November 14, 2006
Rockin' science: CSIRO researcher Richard Helmer demonstrates the shirt that means anyone can be a guitarist.
It's not rocket science. No, no, it's something way cooler. It's rockin' science.
Scientists in Geelong have created something talent-lean wannabe rock gods everywhere need: an air-guitar shirt that allows its wearer to actually play.
The shirt recognises arm movements and relays them wirelessly to a computer, which makes the sound.
Different arm positions create different sounds. The left arm chooses the chords and "plays" them by adopting a certain position, while the right arm strums the "strings".
Just like a real guitar, but without the hours of practice and the bleeding fingers.
There are hopes to take the air-guitar shirt to market, but so far only two exist, one in white, another in a very rock black.
The shirt was created by CSIRO research engineer Richard Helmer, who is also a guitarist. He made it a side project for a couple of years. It was inspired by the intelligent knee sleeve that has been trialled by Geelong Football Club and which, through a series of audio beeps, could tell wearers whether they were landing correctly.
His response to the knee sleeve was pretty instantaneous, Dr Helmer said. "I thought, 'Let's make a guitar out of that'. But . . . it wasn't really until about January this year that the project gained some momentum."
By adapting the knee-sleeve technology, and through collaboration with computer, textile and music experts, the air-guitar shirt was born.
The current model is the shirt's second incarnation. The first involved finger movement in the left hand as well, but was abandoned because it was "too fiddly and complicated" for non-guitarists.
"What we have now is an easy-to-use, virtual instrument that allows real time music-making, even by players without significant musical or computing skills," Dr Helmer said. "It allows you to jump around and the sound generated is just like an original MP3."
The air-guitar shirt technology also has more serious applications. A shirt that could "map" a wearer's body, highlighting postural, muscular or other health problems, is probably not far away, and will be Dr Helmer's next major endeavour.
But he thinks that, simply because it's fun, there could be a market for the air-guitar shirt and he is working on a business plan.
"If enough people are excited about it then we will do it," he said.
Initially, the technology might be expensive but in a few years, the shirts could cost a couple of hundred dollars.
"We'd like to think that they'd be affordable enough so that everyone who wanted one could have one," Dr Helmer said.
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