Air Instrument
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In the context of musical performance, air instruments refers to the
miming A mime artist, or simply mime (from Greek , , "imitator, actor"), is a person who uses ''mime'' (also called ''pantomime'' outside of Britain), the acting out of a story through body motions without the use of speech, as a theatrical medium o ...
of sound-producing-gestures used in playing
musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make Music, musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person ...
s. Simply put, air instruments are imaginary. Examples of air instruments include but are not limited to: Rolf Godøy1 et al., "Playing 'Air Instruments'...", 2006 (see: References). Steven Appleby et al., ''Better Living Through Air Guitar'', 2005. *
air guitar Air guitar is a form of dance and movement in which the performer pretends to play an imaginary Rock music, rock or heavy metal music, heavy metal-style electric guitar, including riffs and solos. Playing an air guitar usually consists of exagge ...
– for
electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external electric Guitar amplifier, sound amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar. It uses one or more pickup (music technology), pickups ...
or
acoustic guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked, its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...
; * air bass – for
bass guitar The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer nec ...
; * air drums – for
snare drum The snare drum (or side drum) is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often u ...
s,
bongos Bongos (Spanish language, Spanish: ''bongó'') are an Afro-Cubans, Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed hand drums of different sizes. The pair consists of the larger ''hembra'' () and the smaller ''macho'' ...
or
bass drum The bass drum is a large drum that produces a note of low definite or indefinite pitch. The instrument is typically cylindrical, with the drum's diameter usually greater than its depth, with a struck head at both ends of the cylinder. The head ...
, or most commonly air drum set often with double bass pedals; * air keyboards – such as air piano for
piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...
; * air violin – for
violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...
or
cello The violoncello ( , ), commonly abbreviated as cello ( ), is a middle pitched bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), tuned i ...
; * air flute – for
flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...
(or
piccolo The piccolo ( ; ) is a smaller version of the western concert flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" or piccolo flute, the modern piccolo has the same type of fingerings as the ...
); * air xylophone – for the
xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African ...
; * air trumpet – for
trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz musical ensemble, ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest Register (music), register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitche ...
(as opposed to car/boat air trumpet horns); * air trombone – for
trombone The trombone (, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's lips vibrate inside a mouthpiece, causing the Standing wave, air c ...
.


Origins

The playing of air instruments has been documented through the 20th century (see:
Air guitar Air guitar is a form of dance and movement in which the performer pretends to play an imaginary Rock music, rock or heavy metal music, heavy metal-style electric guitar, including riffs and solos. Playing an air guitar usually consists of exagge ...
). However, no sources have been found that exclude the playing of air instruments in ancient times, during private performances, such as for air flute or air lyre (for
lyre The lyre () (from Greek λύρα and Latin ''lyra)'' is a string instrument, stringed musical instrument that is classified by Hornbostel–Sachs as a member of the History of lute-family instruments, lute family of instruments. In organology, a ...
s or
harp The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orchestras or ...
s). One gesture musical instrument which won first place in the 2008 Chicago Makers Faire at the Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry is an instrument named Airheads that demonstrates the ability to simulate different musical instrument using only your hand gestures moving in the air.


Air piano

For the air piano, both left and right hands can be used, as well as moving the feet to mimic pressing the piano floor pedals. Besides the imaginary air piano, there is a motion-activated musical instrument interface called an " AirPiano" which is controlled by waving the hands above the top."airpiano", 2007, webpage
www.airpiano.de
: in patent note, the word "filled" is interpreted as "filed".
"Student creates AirPiano", Ben Rogerson, MusicRadar.com, 2008-07-01 (Tuesday), webpage:
Musicradar-2525
The AirPiano is a musical computer interface (from 2007) which allows playing and controlling software instruments simply by moving hands in the air over the device, connected by
USB cable Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an technical standard, industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in partic ...
. Above the AirPiano is an invisible matrix of virtual keys plus faders, each pre-assigned with
MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...
messages and waiting to be triggered, via
infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...
sensors. The length of each triggered note is determined by the time the hand is placed over the corresponding virtual key. Beyond the feedback of the sounds changing, hand placement is also confirmed by LED feedback. The first version of AirPiano generated
polyphonic Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ...
sound, with 24 keys using 8 faders. The AirPiano software provides for the loading/saving of presets and transposing notes. The AirPiano technique has been filed as a Provisional U.S. Patent Application (Number: 60/989,986).


Air violin

Besides the gestures to accompany real violin performances, playing the air violin can also be a form of
sarcasm Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflectio ...
, to indicate that another person seems to be rambling with a sob story or whining excessively, in
self-pity Self-pity is an emotion in which one feels self-centered sorrow and pity toward the self regarding one's own internal and external experiences of suffering. Self-pity has also been defined as an emotion "directed towards others with the goal of ...
. "What I wish I could have said to my teachers", Nogie Demirjian, 2002, L.A. Youth, Los Angeles, CA; webpage:
LA-Youth-1175
.


Notes


References

* Steven Appleby and George Mole, ''Better Living Through Air Guitar'', 2005-03-11, publisher: Piatkus, , . * Rolf Inge Godøy1, Egil Haga1 and Alexander Refsum Jensenius1, "Playing 'Air Instruments': Mimicry of Sound-Producing Gestures by Novices and Experts", ''Gesture in Human-Computer Interaction and Simulation'', February 2006,
University of Oslo The University of Oslo (; ) is a public university, public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation#Europe, oldest university in Norway. Originally named the Royal Frederick Univ ...
, Department of Musicology,
Oslo, Norway Oslo ( or ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of towns and cities in Norway, most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a Counties of Norway, county and a Municipalities of Norway, municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a populat ...
, {{ISBN, 978-3-540-32624-3.


External links

* Rolf Godøy1 et al., "Playing 'Air Instruments': Mimicry of Sound-Producing Gestures by Novices and Experts", ''Gesture in Human-Computer Interaction and Simulation'', February 2006, webpage
SpringerLink-1152
(HTML, with link to preview or PDF). * "AirPiano - Musical Interface (AirPiano) - 440TV Video", webpage
440TV-AirPiano-video
* "AirHeads - By John R. Folaron Human gesture Musical Midi controller Interface played like a harp or Air Drums ", webpage
www.Air-Instruments.com
Dance moves Guitar performance techniques