Reader Geert Bevin let us know about a new application his company Uwyn is working on, GestureControl for the Leap Motion Controller.
The Leap Motion is an extremely precise USB motion sensor that’s expected to be released in May, priced at $80.
GestureControl has been designed for live performance and it operates at extremely low latency, while requiring very little resources on your computer. It can thus perfectly run alongside any MIDI capable software.
In this demo, Bevin demonstrates some of the configuration capabilities while using Native Instrument’s Razor synth in Reaktor.
Features:
- 40 different control streams with both hands
- any control stream can be mapped to MIDI CC and Pitchbend messages on 16 different channels
- instantly switch between related control streams by opening or closing your hands
- carefully designed GUI for an immediate overview of the active MIDI mappings
- real-time low-latency visual feedback of your hand movements and MIDI data
- integrated virtual MIDI port on MacOSX
- connects to any known MIDI output port on your computer
- fully customisable user interface (colours, graphical elements)
- flexible document management that can be loaded while performing gestures
- high performance and near-zero latency engine with virtually no CPU impact when the real-time visualisations are hidden
- MIDI decimation setting to allow integration with legacy hardware that has limited MIDI bandwidth
Pricing and Availability
The currently planned introduction price will be $9.99 and it will be available with the Leap Motion launch on May 13. See the Uwyn site for details.
GestureControl plus the Leap Motion hardware look like they will offer a powerful gestural MIDI control platform for under $100.
I like that a lot, can it be used on any midi instrument, does it have to be software, this wih a prophet 12 would be rather tasty!
GestureControl works with any known MIDI port on your computer. Some external MIDI devices might have trouble keeping up with the data rates that it’s sending natively though, that’s why we’ve added a configuration option to decimate the data so that you can fine-tune it for your configuration.
Nice product, thanks for sharing. How much latency is there?
This looks like a great step for leap as well as gestural music production! Any plans in the future for leap to work with an ipad? Maybe via an adapter or cck?
That looks so sick! I can imagine how it could change production/live performances for the better.
This company just keeps getting better and better, can’t wait to see what they come out with next
It seems this particular software is being developed and released by Uwyn. The Leap motion folks put out a call to developers a long while back and they obviously agreed this is an awesome project.
That’s impressive. Its a programmable, multi-axis theremin that isn’t shackled to just a sine wave. NOW the darned instrument interests me more, heh heh.
Its not a matter of what it CAN do, but how people are going to connect the gestures with the sounds. I see a slight cognizant disconnect because things like this are not standard instruments, so they can demand a lot of flexibility from the audience. People are generally aware of the tech now, so the real neat trick will be to pull off a virtuoso move with it that makes the crowd go OOOOOO. That’s when you know the thing has Arrived.
Debate aside, hats off for a really good design that elevates the playing field for leading-edge instruments. I’m a real skeptic about some of the new toys, but not this one. Its something you’ll still be playing in 20 years, OS revisions willing. Its that direct and visceral. BEST GUI OF THE MONTH.
Realy nice!
Does anybody know what kind
of midi device he is using ?
Thanks! The device I used is an Eigenharp Pico.