Overview

An essential part of the musical experience in rock music is in the body movements, and a very characteristic movement is the vigorous nodding of the head in sync to guitar strokes or the beat, also known as Headbanging.

Bangarama emerged from the idea to change the headbanger's role from a passive listener to an active musician. The player is able to trigger different tones, by just moving his head back and forth.

Bangarama consists of a sensor for tracking head movements and a guitar-shaped input device, which is equipped with touch sensors. Those sensors let the player easily choose different tones, i. e. sound samples, by simply touching the surface of the neck, instead of performing complex guitar grips.

Mastering a classical instrument is a complex and time-consuming task, which requires years of exercising. Our aim was to provide Bangarama with a high amount of flexibility, which makes Bangarama interesting for versed guitar players, as well as easily playable for unexperienced or even non-musicians.

Bangarama was originally developed within the scope of a student project at the Media Computing Group at RWTH Aachen University. The complete system was produced within 4 weeks, using "low-budget" components.

Technical Description

Bangarama consists of three core components: the head tracking sensor, input device for tone selection and a software processing for the processing of input and audio data.

Head tracking sensor
The Bangarama sensor is attached to a baseball cap using a velcro strip, which allows each user to individually adjust the alignment of the sensor. The sensor is made of wire and works like a physical seesaw. If the head is moved downwards, the sensor pin tilts towards the front bracket and eventually closes the circuit. The contact opens when the head is moved back to its normal position. This creates two different signals that are evaluated in our software.

Tone Selection
The controller device for tone selection resembles an electric guitar. Each fret consists of a pair of small pieces of tin foil, which are vertically aligned with a small gap between them. The player also wears a piece of tin foil on a finger of his playing hand. Putting this finger on a one of the tin foil pairs closes an electrical circuit which triggers the tone selection. The controller allows to choose between 13 different samples.

Software
The Incoming signals are transfered to the computer via an USB-Keyboard. All signals are processed by the multimedia development environment Max/MSP. The Bangarama software allows the assigment of arbitrary sound samples to the tone selector, handles the playback of arbitrary background music and evaluates the signals from the head sensor.