Rather than bopping your head in time to the music coming through the headphones, what if your headbanging could actually control the beat? Engineer Andrew Lee has developed a system that does exactly that, triggering audio and setting tempo with a nod of the head.
Lee describes the Nod Bang as a "sort of musical performance toy." The project started as a simple sketch and over the following 60 days became a nod-detecting rhythm maker.
An accelerometer attached to a pair of headphones feeds movement data to an Arduino, and custom Max code translates each head nod into a metronome-type beat. The tempo of the output is dictated by the wearer, and four 3D-printed, backlit arcade buttons on the top of a control box cabled up to the modified cans and a laptop add in more MIDI sounds to the mix – such as a synth drone or a cymbal crash.
Its creator says that the system hasn't been designed to keep wearers entertained for more than a few minutes, after which the novelty will likely wear off and controlling music this way will become something of a chore. But, there are a number of headphone-wearing music lovers who simply can't keep their noggin from bopping along to the tunes, so maybe such a device would find appeal among committed beat nodders.
Add in some connected sandles and a couple of air drumsticks, like those from Maayan Migdal, and you'd have a beat machine that really cooked.
Source: Andrew Lee
