T-Shirt Lets Air Guitarists Create Music

Move over Bill and Ted.

A group of Australian scientists have created a T-shirt with built-in motion sensors that lets average joes make real music by playing the air guitar, BBC News reports.

The embedded motion sensors within the T-shirt read specific movements made by its wearer and wirelessly send the corresponding information to a nearby PC, which translates the movements into notes or chords, according to BBC News.

One arm is used to send single notes to the computer, and the other represents chords, BBC News reports. The T-shirt can be tailored to work with right-handed and left-handed air guitarists, according to BBC News.

Richard Helmer, an engineer with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia and leader of the research team that developed the T-shirt, said, “It’s an easy-to-use, virtual instrument that allows real-time music-making—even by players without significant musical or computing skills,” according to BBC News.

Helmer also said the concept behind the air guitar T-shirt could be used to study individual body movements in a virtual environment to help athletes master specific actions, or to find flaws in their current body movements, BBC News reports.

The researchers have already modified the associated software to enable people wearing the T-shirt to play an air tambourine and an air guiro, a percussion instrument, according to BBC News.

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