There's been a couple of suggestions to finger drums (see link). I've had this idea for awhile but with spin on it.

Most ideas work on a buttons, so that when you tap your fingers it closes a switch and works very much like a traditional keyboard albeit in a glove. I suggest a similar system, but the sensors mechanism would be accelerometers on each finger.

The advantages would be that authentic finger-on-counter feel that all the old school finger drums strive for. If you got a 2 axis accelerometer you could also detect your fingers moving towards and away from your fist, for actions such as playing different sounds in a grid layed out on a table.

Alternatively I suggest a similar system but using Piezoelectric sensors that hear the vibrations and infer volume etc from that. that way when you set up your book as a bass drum and plate as a hi-hat the software can automatically interpret these as different drums.
-- metarinka, Sep 15 2011

prior idea Trigger-riffic_20Gloves
Finger drum based on switches [metarinka, Sep 15 2011]

Triplettes de Belleville http://www.youtube....watch?v=z3E1HCAjJqI
[mouseposture, Sep 15 2011]

[+] for the variant in para. 4. Basing the sound on the actual mechanical ringing of the book, plate, etc. is nifty. You'd wind up strolling around tapping various objects to hear what they sounded like. <link>

Problem is, the pickup in the glove would tend to lose mechanical contact with the object after the initial transient, and before it had finished ringing. You might need a sort of "dead" tapping action, in which your finger tip, instead of striking and rebounding, struck and remained in contact for a few 10s of milliseconds.

Also, plenty of empirical DSP, but that's no disadvantage: people would enjoy playing with that.
-- mouseposture, Sep 15 2011


I think you could get around the short contact, by picking out the fundamental frequency which could be calculated in just a few short wavelengths. I'm an avid finger drummer and will always make the BD sound with my thumb, and hi hats by clicking fingernails. I think a piezoelectric sensor could differentiate pretty fast between those waveforms.
-- metarinka, Sep 16 2011



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