http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028186.100-handhacking-lets-you-pluck-strings-like-a-musical-pro.html
Hand-hacking lets you pluck strings like a musical pro
23 June 2011 by Jacob Aron
Magazine issue 2818. Subscribe and save
Video: Hand-hacking helps budding musicians
WANT to learn a musical instrument, but can't find the time to
practise? A device now under development can take control of your hand
and teach you how to play a tune. No spirits of dead musicians are
involved.
PossessedHand, being developed jointly by the University of Tokyo,
Japan, and Sony Computer Science Laboratories, also in Tokyo,
electrically stimulates the muscles in the forearm that move your
fingers. A belt worn around that part of the subject's arm contains 28
electrode pads, which flex the joints between the three bones of each
finger and the two bones of the thumb, and provide two wrist
movements. Users were able to sense the movement of their hands that
this produced, even with their eyes closed. "The user's fingers are
controlled without the user's mind," explains Emi Tamaki of the
University of Tokyo, who led the research.
Devices that stimulate people's fingers have been made before, but
they used electrodes embedded in the skin, which are invasive, or
glove-like devices that make it hard to manipulate an object. Tamaki
claims that her device is far more comfortable. "The electric
stimulations are similar to low-frequency massage stimulations that
are commonly used," she says.
Having successfully hijacked a hand, the researchers tried to teach it
how to play the koto, a traditional Japanese stringed instrument. Koto
players wear different picks on three fingers, but pluck the strings
with all five fingertips, so each finger produces a distinctive sound.
A koto score tells players which fingers should be moved and when, and
from this Tamaki and her team were able to generate instructions
telling their device how and when to stimulate the wearer's muscles.
PossessedHand does not generate enough force to pluck the koto
strings, but it could help novice players by teaching them the correct
finger movements. Tamaki and her team found that two beginner players
made a total of four timing errors when using PossessedHand, compared
with 13 when playing unassisted. After prompting from the device, the
players also made one less mistake about which finger to use.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the players found it unsettling to have the
device move their hand by itself. "I felt like my body was hacked,"
said one. Tamaki is confident that people will get used to the idea
once they see how useful it can be: "We believe convenient technology
will overcome a feeling of fear."
As well as helping would-be musicians, PossessedHand could be used to
rehabilitate people who have suffered a stroke or other injury that
impairs muscle control. Therapists already use electrical muscle
stimulation to help these people, but existing non-invasive devices
can only achieve crude movements such as contracting the entire arm.
Henrik Gollee, who researches rehabilitation devices at the University
of Glasgow, UK, says PossessedHand could help patients train a wider
range of movements. "I was surprised by the level of fine movement
they can actually achieve," he says.
Simon Holland, director of the Music Computing Lab at the Open
University in Milton Keynes, UK, points out that there is a big
difference between learning to play one song and being a competent
musician. "You might learn a fingering and be able to reproduce that
performance, without necessarily being able to perform simple
variants," he says._______________________________________________
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