Mogees iPhone-connected sensor turns any object into a playable instrument

I’m not musically inclined. Nor do I pretend to be. Give me a Rock Band Drum Kit and I’ll get after it, but otherwise, instruments are completely intimidating. Like many of you out there, I enjoy tapping my pencil along to the beat or playing the bongos on my desk to my favorite song. If only there was a way to translate that into real music…

That’s where Mogees comes in. A simple iPhone add-on that detects vibration and translates it into music. So your desk full of accessories instantly becomes a drum kit. Or a kitchen sink is suddenly transformed into a synthesizer. The opportunities are endless…

Mogees uses a combination of sensors and a “trainable” iOS app to detect your movements and turn them to sounds. After placing the sensor on a surface, users first register gestures on different parts of the “instrument” which allows Mogees to assign sounds to individual locations.

Within the app, a wide range of sounds and notes can be partnered with each gesture creating a custom instrument. After a quick setup, the new instrument is ready to play. Multiple sensors can be paired together to create a multi-channel audio interface. It can even be added to existing instruments and be “tuned” to attach sounds to different chords, etc.

The app serves as the main recording interface for each performance. Mogees can then export each song individually or share with other apps like Garageband or LoopyHD. The Audio Unit and VST plug-in for Mac OS X allows for software such as Logic, Ableton Live and others to work with exported files as well.

The official Mogees YouTube channel is littered with examples of every day objects being turned into instruments. A few months back, a prototype even made an appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel show. It’s very interesting to consider all of the possibilities that might come from this project. One of the stretch goals set by Mogees involves an educational version of the sensor for schools. Now that would bring classroom instruments to the next level.

Mogees launched on Kickstarter a while back and is enjoying quite a bit of success, having raised over 4x its initial goal. With just three days remaining, Mogees has nearly $136,000 attached to its project. Currently a pledge of $144 will deliver a sensor bundle before the end of the year.

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