High Tech T-Shirt: Be a Guitar Hero

Are you looking for a way to release your hidden air guitar talents? Australian scientist and researcher Richard Helmer of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization of Australia National Science Agency has created the ultimate guitar hero T shirt.

Flowing along with Peter Frampton's riffs on "Do You Feel", rocking on "American Idiot" with Billie Joe Armstrong and Green Day, picking an imaginary guitar with your teeth as Jimmy Hendrix plays "Fire", or keeping up with Meg White's hammering drums you can be a guitar hero.

Dr. Richard Helmer has designed a T shirt that reads the motions of the wearer's left and right arm and translates them in to musical notes like those played on a guitar. Motion sensors sewn in the elbows translate the muscle tension involved in chord picking and strumming moves that make an axe sing. The left arm chooses the note as it runs up and down an invisible fret board. Picking and strumming motions by the right arm play each note.

Helmer has made an objectless musical instrument that will have the wearer seemingly making music out of thin air. The intelligent textiles have a human-computer interface that recognizes the gestures made and converts them to mp3 quality audio samples. Wireless transmitters beam the musical notes to speakers. It takes air guitar to a whole new level. No more silently mimicking the sound of Robert Plant as his nimble fingers pluck chords and his hand slides along the neck of his guitar. You will actually hear the notes you play.

At the CISRO website (csiro.au/science/ps294.html) you can hear Dr. Helmer describe his invention and see the Doctor on stage. The intelligent textile shirt allows total freedom of movement. You can leap off speaker tops while playing ear shattering chords or spring high in the air whirling your legs like Pete Townsend but without the sound of smashing instruments.

Two other musical air shirts are being developed. You will be able to slap a tambourine or challenge your percussion skills. In the future there will not just be air guitar, there will be a complete air band.

Entertainment is the first step in the use of intelligent textiles. The same technology can be used to controls mp3 players and computer keyboards. A host of commercial applications are possible. In the future even medical technology could benefit from the use of these incredible fabrics.

This is the next level of air music. Your air guitar will not just synch along with the music. Your personally created notes will be in harmony with your favorite tunes. Are you good enough?