Unofficial LEAP Motion tech demos & experiments collection

Purpose:
The purpose of this video is to explore the possibilities of Leap Motion technology for making music, and to hopefully inspire others to start exploring. This is not intended to be a performance, merely a demonstration.

Hypothesis:
Using Leap Motion to control a synthesizer and arpeggiator might be awesome.

Materials:
Leap Motion, Geco, Ableton Live, Max For Live, Hands
Live Instruments: Operator, Arpeggiator, Compressor, Gate, Limiter, Midi Scale
Max for Live Instruments: Max Api CtrlMIDIcc, Convolution Reverb Pro

Experiment:
Fingers Open:
Hand Presence – gate on/off
Left Hand Back & Forth Position – arp synced rate
Left Hand Up & Down – filter frequency
Left Hand Roll – pitch
Right Hand Back & Forth – reverb wet/dry
Right Hand Up & Down – arp distance
Right Hand Roll – vibrato amount

Fingers Closed:
Right Hand Up & Down: synth amp envelope release

Note: I won’t go into ranges of parameters or synth patch design because it’s boring and should be programmed to taste anyway.

Step 1. Test out each gesture
Step 2: Combine gestures
Step 3: Wave hands around randomly

Results:
Crazy Sounds

Conclusion:
There are a lot of parameters in this patch and it’s difficult to control each one individually without affecting another, which is not really an issue, but worth noting. Sometimes I reached the minimum or maximum of a parameter and Geco would get confused and snap to another value, which is somewhat noticeable in the video. I thought implementing the LAST command on Rest Value would fix this, but it didn’t seem to work every time, probably due it getting it confused with another gesture. It is difficult to have one thing like Up & Down mapped to fingers open and closed, as transitioning between controlling each can be confusing. In conclusion, this experiment has certainly demonstrated the possibilities for creating an extremely powerful and highly entertaining performance style for the discerning electronic musician, while also creating a nifty toy for the layman to just randomly wave his/her hands around and make cool sounds.

Note: The strange light changes in the video happened completely by accident, probably due to my hands blocking the ceiling light, but it happens to go well with the sound and gestures.

 

follo Nate Belasco YoutubeChannel