Leap Motion Controller Spawns An Orchestra At Music Hack Day SF 2013

By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

The Leap Motion Controller is a little box that can tell where your hands are. Its creators say it’s “more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen,” and “for the first time, you can control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements.”

The below video, from San Francisco Music Hack Day 2013, shows what happens when some clever people get together to use it to write and perform a song in a single 24-hour period. Not bad, gentlemen. The results are as interesting as they are musical.

From the description,

Leap Orchestra – project for SF Music Hack Day 2013, three approaches to sound creation and two methods of visualization come together in a music demonstration all using the leap motion device.

Unedited version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVmUub…
Music Hack Page: https://www.hackerleague.org/hackatho…
More about the Leap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature…

Seth Tsui – Music Composer and Reason Integration (controls synth parameters in reason, one mapped to each finger, to perform filter sweeps, pitch/modulation bends, and dubstep wobble live)
Tyler Freeman – OSC programmer and Supercollider Integration (controls harp synth live with virtual strings mapped to points in space)
Neal Riley – MAX/MSP integration (controls rhythm track live with palm xyz motion like a gear shift)
Vamsi Bharadwaj – Visuals (visualizer reacts to music audio to create ambient images)
Dean Hudson – Visuals (Seth’s hand and finger positions create points of light in image that is broadcast over the network to every local wi-fi user, viewable as a webpage)

Thanks to:
Peter Sobot – videographer
Yang Chen – videographer
SF Music Hack Day and Tokbox – event/venue sponsor