Democratizing access to collaborative music making over the network using air instruments

To date, scarce research has been conducted on the development of tools capable of fostering the democratization of the access to collaborative music making over the network. This paper describes a system based on interconnected air instruments conceived for introducing musically untrained people to collaborative music playing. The system consists of an application controlling synthesizers via real-time finger tracking on input from a consumer-grade camera, which is used in conjunction with a basic networking music performance system communicating control messages. Moving fingers in the air is one of the simplest movements that everybody can afford, thus it was selected as an optimal candidate to build a musical instrument accessible to everybody. A user study was conducted to assess the experience in interacting with the system, involving ten pairs of participants with no musical expertise. Overall, results showed that participants deemed that the system was effective in providing a high user experience, adequate to enable non-musicians to play together at a distance. Moreover, the system was judged as capable of promoting music playing for non-musicians thus fostering easiness of access to music making in a collaborative fashion. A critical reflection on the results is provided, along with a discussion of the study limitations and possible future works.