Virtual air-guitar software becomes big hit

TV and radio stations lining up at the door of Finnish inventors

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By Erkki Kylmänen
     
      A British film-crew representing the Discovery Australia channel track through the rooms of the Music exhibition at the Finnish Science Centre Heureka in Vantaa and arrive at a booth where a guitar gently weeps and a loudspeaker belts out the sound.
      The camera zooms in on Aki Kanerva, who stands on a low dais, wearing bright orange gloves on his hands, and plays an air-guitar.
      Yes, that's right, he actually PLAYS it, because this air-guitar really produces its own sound. No playback required.
     
The playable air-guitar or air-guitar simulator is a device designed and built by Kanerva, Teemu Mäki-Patola, and Juha Laitinen, and it is fast becoming an international sensation.
      The trio, all studying and working at the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT), dreamed up their guitar for the Heureka exhibit, which opened last March and runs through to March 5th this year.
      The virtual instrument became an international hit only at the end of last year. The first to pick up on the exceptional value of the device was the webmaster of a Belgian site named "We make money not art". She just happened to know a journailst working for New Scientist.
     
The journalist got interested and wrote up a piece for the online pages of the magazine. Word spread, and before long there was a line forming outside the inventors' door.
      It was the Canadians who kicked off the interview boom. The first Canadian interviews with the makers were carried out the very next day after the New Scientist piece hit the Web, and thus far they have been followed by international TV and radio stations and by publications from the BBC to RTL and National Geographic.
      And the story isn't going away anytime soon.
      "After the New Scientist thing we suddenly had 100,000 downloads of the air-guitar videos on our pages in the space of a couple of days, and the entire site went down. The same thing happened to the Heureka pages", explain Mäki-Patola and Kanerva.
     
The sound of the virtual air-guitar is based on computer modelling and hand gestures. The "player" dons a pair of orange gloves, stands in front of a web camera and a computer display, uses a foot-pedal to switch between chords or a solo, and then goes through the motions of playing a guitar.
      The camera lens picks up the hand gestures, on the strings and fretboard, which the computer then repeats, and out of the speaker stack comes a meaty power riff, rich in fuzz and feedback.
      The guitar sound is produced in the computer by a model that imitates the vibration of the guitar strings. The model itself is the handiwork of Prof. Matti Karjalainen of the Laboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing at HUT.
      In the model (see also under "Technology" and "How to Play" in the links below) the three lowest strings on the simulated guitar produce pre-selected power chords, whereas for riffs ands solos the three top strings offer up a pentatonic minor scale, with fret slides and vibrato available.
      The distance between the player's hands determines the pitch of the sound produced, and the sound that comes out is produced through an amplifier simulator that gives it that throaty distort familiar to all air-guitar axe-heroes.
     
The success of the project has been so impressive that the three guys are setting up their own company around their invention.
      "We've even had venture capital offers. Investors in Finland and Japan have shown interest, and negotiations are going on with the Americans", says Aki Kanerva.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.2.2006
     
Note: The last link in the list is a little something for those of you at home (go on, admit it) who might like to try your hand at being a certified axe-hero. Join Mr. Fastfinger for a crash course in guitar pyrotechnics. It is in English, and requires only that you hit the letter and number keys on the PC keyboard. You must defeat an evil accordion-playing demon in a jamming duel, after first sharpening up your one-hand legatos, power chords, and scratch and slide technique. You may also need to do something about your hair.

More on this subject:
 "Pick up my (air) guitar and play..."

Links:
  Project Air Guitar (HUT) - contains video material; the last one is superb!
  The technology behind the device
  How to Play
  We make money not art: The Virtual Air Guitar
  New Scientist: Air guitarists´ rock dreams come true
  Heureka - Finnish Science Centre, Vantaa
  Oulu Air Guitar World Championships
  Mr. Fastfinger (guitar tutor extraordinaire, courtesy of Mika Tyyskä)

ERKKI KYLMÄNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
erkki.kylmanen@hs.fi