Edoardo Giusto, Mattia Griotti,, Mauro Guerrera, Simone Palombi, Edrian Jose Quintos, Giulio Scalia.
On November 14-15, 2015 Jetop (http://www.jetop.com/) and I3P (http://www.i3p.it/) run a wearable hackathon (http://www.treatabit.com/article/wearable-hackathon) (http://www.wearabletechtorino.com/en/about-us/ ).
Among participating teams, I am very honored and proud to report that a group formed by several of my former (and soon to be former) students won the first prize with the project “KODÁLY BAND” (a tribute to the famous musician Zoltan Kodály). The idea was very simple, as reported by one of the members of the team:
I was walking along the streets and i watched street artists perform at night and i wondered why do instruments have to be so heavy to create music. So I had an idea of a wearable device that could create music. A friend of ours then told us that in Hungary Zoltan Kodály had improvised a method to teach music using hand gestures. So we based the tech to him and as a omage we gave the project name KODÁLY BAND. The idea is to be able to play together with other devices thus the name BAND. We also integrated colors as visual representation of the music. I hope we could make a device that could show the deaf community the beauty of music through colors. With kodály band we hope to integrate music and performance. Now you can create music, dance, and/or sing all at the same time.
Please have a look at the short clip below and visit the project web page at https://www.facebook.com/kodalyband (Video courtesy by Edrian Jose Quintos)
Kodály band is a wearable musical instrument. It uses multiple sensors to sense the orientation of the user's arm and sends data wirelessly to a peripheral device that is able to convert the data to sound. The study is based to a real musical teaching method widely used internationally called Kodály Method. Zoltan Kodály is a musician that developed a method to teach music to children using hand gestures. This method makes learning fun and easier for the children. Kodály Band also uses color to identify the sound it is producing the colorful lights up the hand to add fun and emotion to music. We also developed this in the design process to give a possibility to show the beauty of music to the deaf community through colors. Kodály Band isn't just a simple wearable device. The idea is to create a musical band meaning connect multiple devices using different and unique sound profiles. The device is still in development phase.