In the context of musical performance, air instruments refers to the
miming
A mime artist, or simply mime (from Greek language, Greek , , "imitator, actor"), is a person who uses ''mime'' (also called ''pantomime'' outside of Britain), the acting out of a story through body motions without the use of speech, as a the ...
of sound-producing-gestures used in playing
musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...
s. Simply put, air instruments are imaginary. Examples of air instruments include but are not limited to:
Rolf Godøy1 et al., "Playing 'Air Instruments'...", 2006
(see: References).
Steven Appleby et al., ''Better Living Through Air Guitar'', 2005.
*
air guitar
Air guitar is a form of dance and movement in which the performer pretends to play an imaginary rock or heavy metal-style electric guitar, including riffs and solos. Playing an air guitar usually consists of exaggerated strumming and picking m ...
– for
electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
or
acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...
;
* air bass – for
bass guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
;
* air drums – for
snare drum
The snare (or side drum) is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often used ...
s,
bongos
Bongos ( es, bongó) are an Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed hand drums of different sizes. They are struck with both hands, most commonly in an eight-stroke pattern called ''martillo'' (hammer). The ...
or
bass drum
The bass drum is a large drum that produces a note of low definite or indefinite pitch. The instrument is typically cylindrical, with the drum's diameter much greater than the drum's depth, with a struck head at both ends of the cylinder. Th ...
, or most commonly air drum set often with double bass pedals;
* air keyboards – such as air piano for
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
;
* air violin – for
violin
The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...
or
cello
The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...
;
* air flute – for
flute
The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...
(or
piccolo
The piccolo ( ; Italian for 'small') is a half-size flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" the modern piccolo has similar fingerings as the standard transverse flute, but the so ...
);
* air xylophone – for the
xylophone
The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in the ...
;
* air trumpet – for
trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
(as opposed to car/boat air trumpet horns);
* air trombone – for
trombone
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...
.
Origins
The playing of air instruments has been documented through the 20th century (see:
Air guitar
Air guitar is a form of dance and movement in which the performer pretends to play an imaginary rock or heavy metal-style electric guitar, including riffs and solos. Playing an air guitar usually consists of exaggerated strumming and picking m ...
). However, no sources have been found that exclude the playing of air instruments in ancient times, during private performances, such as for air flute or air lyre (for
lyre
The lyre () is a stringed musical instrument that is classified by Hornbostel–Sachs as a member of the lute-family of instruments. In organology, a lyre is considered a yoke lute, since it is a lute in which the strings are attached to a yoke ...
s or
harp
The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has a number of individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orche ...
s). One gesture musical instrument which won first place in the 2008 Chicago Makers Faire at the Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry is an instrument named Airheads that demonstrates the ability to simulate different musical instrument using only your hand gestures moving in the air.
Air piano
For the air piano, both left and right hands can be used, as well as moving the feet to mimic pressing the piano floor pedals.
Besides the imaginary air piano, there is a motion-activated musical instrument interface called an " AirPiano" which is controlled by waving the hands above the top."airpiano", 2007,
webpage www.airpiano.de :
in patent note, the word "filled" is interpreted as "filed".
"Student creates AirPiano", Ben Rogerson,
MusicRadar.com, 2008-07-01 (Tuesday), webpage:
Musicradar-2525
The AirPiano is a musical computer interface (from 2007) which allows playing and controlling software instruments simply by moving hands in the air over the device, connected by
USB cable
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an technical standard, industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and communication protocol, protocols for connection, communication and power supply (Interface (computing), interfa ...
. Above the AirPiano is an invisible matrix of virtual keys plus faders, each pre-assigned with
MIDI
MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...
messages and waiting to be triggered, via
infrared
Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...
sensors. The length of each triggered note is determined by the time the hand is placed over the corresponding virtual key. Beyond the feedback of the sounds changing, hand placement is also confirmed by LED feedback. The first version of AirPiano generated
polyphonic
Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, h ...
sound, with 24 keys using 8 faders.
The AirPiano software provides for the loading/saving of presets and transposing notes. The AirPiano technique has been filed as a Provisional U.S. Patent Application (Number: 60/989,986).
Air violin
Besides the gestures to accompany real violin performances, playing the air violin can also be a form of
sarcasm
Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection ...
, to indicate that another person seems to be rambling with a
* Steven Appleby and George Mole, ''Better Living Through Air Guitar'', 2005-03-11, publisher: Piatkus, , .
* Rolf Inge Godøy1, Egil Haga1 and Alexander Refsum Jensenius1, "Playing 'Air Instruments': Mimicry of Sound-Producing Gestures by Novices and Experts", ''Gesture in Human-Computer Interaction and Simulation'', February 2006,
University of Oslo
The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...
, Department of Musicology,
Oslo, Norway
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of i ...
, {{ISBN, 978-3-540-32624-3.
External links
* Rolf Godøy1 et al., "Playing 'Air Instruments': Mimicry of Sound-Producing Gestures by Novices and Experts", ''Gesture in Human-Computer Interaction and Simulation'', February 2006, webpage SpringerLink-1152 (HTML, with link to preview or PDF).
* "AirPiano - Musical Interface (AirPiano) - 440TV Video", webpage 440TV-AirPiano-video
* "AirHeads - By John R. Folaron Human gesture Musical Midi controller Interface played like a harp or Air Drums ", webpage www.Air-Instruments.com Dance movesGuitar performance techniques