Courtesy of wired.com. Click here to watch the video.

A group of American students from the department of Computing and Engineering and the School of Music at the University of Michigan has “created” an entire orchestra with their iPhones.

The music is generated from applications the students built themselves as part of their studies. The iPhones are attached to speakers, which the students wear around their wrists.

The students performed at a live concert of their original compositions on 9 December to mark the end of their three-month course, run by Austrian computer scientist and musician Georg Essl.

Essi told BBC News that while the concept of using computers to make music was not new, the rise of smart phones had made the idea more practical.

He added that unlike traditional instruments iPhones do not have to be physically modified for sound as the in-built microphone could be transformed into a non-speech sensor, enabling students to blow into it in order to mimic a wind instrument.

The motion sensors can also be used musically - an application can be programmed to sound different when the device is tilted, for example - but the desired effect is down to the individual designer.
"In many ways, composition for us means composing the instrument as well as the music," said Mr Essl. "We can choose what a tilt will mean."

He admitted that the new technology was a work in progress that would advance as the devices themselves became more sophisticated.

Power to smart phones,
Naked Surfer