Each one of us have doubtless attempted to be taught how to play air guitar at least one time. Now, some PC scientists in Finland have come up with a device that turns this rock fantasy into real music an air guitar that truly plays.

Learn to Play Air Guitar like a Superstar

The virtual guitar is the invention of Aki Kinerva and other computer scientists from the Helsinki University of Technology. All you need is a pair of gloves and a camera. Then you take a rock star pose, like you were holding a real guitar and just rock away.

The camera will be tracking your hand movement along the hypothetical fret board, as well as the strumming of the other hand. Then the PC will receive the data and turn the gestures into licks and riffs. While you’ll possibly not share the stage with Eric Clapton, the system gives any of us an opportunity to feel a bit like a rock celebrity.

Ever since rock music was born, youths, as well as many adults all around the globe have been playing air guitar while listening to their favorite rock and roll bands on the stereo. Now, these PC scientists in Finland have turned this habit into real music with an air guitar that truly makes some sounds.

How Does It Work?

To make things even better, the technology is kind of totally invisible. The gloves that you’ve got to wear are just a couple of standard orange gardening gloves. As you are playing ( or in my case, learn how to play air guitar ), a web camera that’s programmed to see only the orange color will watch your gloves and track their movement. In realtime, software engineered to recognize gestures will interpret your hand movement into sounds. When you’ll be moving your hand down the fret board, the sound will go higher, as if you were playing a genuine guitar. It truly feels and sounds as if you were basically playing.

What are you able to basically Play?

Sure, you won’t be able to do all you can do on a real guitar. You won’t be able to play songs like “Stairway to Heaven” on an air guitar. However, if it worked just like a real one, you would probably have to spend months to learn to play air guitar. With an air guitar, you get to feel like a rock guitarist within a few seconds. The things you can do are limited though.

If you need to learn how to play air guitar with Kinerva’s technology, there are 2 models you can select from : chord and solo mode. If you select the chord mode, you’ll only be ready to play 4 different chords. This is indeed limiting, but it is enough for playing the opening chords of songs like Smoke on the Water and other rock classics. With the solo mode, it’ll be as if you were running up and down a pentatonic scale, which is the standard key of rock guitar solos.

The neatest thing is that you cannot really play it badly. Regardless of how you are moving your hands and mixing chords and solo notes, it’ll sound like you are playing something.

The whole system works on an ordinary desktop computer. The inventors are now working on a Windows version and air guitar may someday become as common as Game cubes or X-boxes. Who knows, maybe it will even inspire some people to sit down and learn to play a real guitar.

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