Replacing your clarinet bell with Music in Motion MiM v1.0 will turn your clarinet into an electronically extended music instrument with new and improved ways for composing and performing music. MiM is a sensor-based system for gesture aided musical expressions that can be used to process sound, video, lighting, etc. MiM is the result of an interdisciplinary scientific and artistic research project at Luleå University of Technology.

We wanted to use musician’s movements to achieve a deeper interaction with electroacoustic music. This interaction can also be extended to the spatial aspect, where the musician can be said to be in a context of musical activities and where the clarinet’s position in relation to these becomes important. In that sense, the concert hall’s physical extent becomes part of the music, that is, the music is placed not only in a concert hall, but rather in a spatial environment.

We’ve designed a clarinet bell with a 9DOF sensor equipped with onboard sensor fusion. Using a combination of different sensor data, such as, accelerometer and gyroscope combined with pitch readings, we’ve created a system that can use the clarinet players movement qualities to create new audiovisual expressions.

”I love how Music in Motion opens up new worlds and territories to explore. As a clarinet player you are usually limited to play one voice at a time but with this technology, I feel more like a piano player who can play several layers at the same time. This opens up for so much creativity and new ways of expressing yourself as a musician and yet maintaining all the great things with the acoustic clarinet.”  – Magnus Holmander, professional clarinetist