12 May 2008
Pocket Toshi exclusively available for SF members!
Get it and encourage the artist in yourself!
 Pocket Toshi is a prototype of a music application for the Accelerometer enabled Symbian S60 phones like Nokia N95 developed by Teemu Korpilahti and Jenna Sutela and thanks to the authors I am allowed to exclusively offer it through the Symbian Freak.
Pocket Toshi offers a creative means for using an everyday object. It turns the mobile phone into an instrument for easy music making in an instant and creates a new emotional dimension to the use of mobile technology.
Taking after the classic mobile ping pong as well as experimental music interfaces (like Toshio Iwai’s Tenori-on) Pocket Toshi sets new creative challenges for composition.
It displays chimes/piano on the right side of the screen and percussions on the left. Also an additional gesture sound by Marcus Malka can be found when rapidly moving the phone in the vertical direction. Pocket Toshi is played with a round shaped cursor detecting motion based on values from the phone's accelerometer.
Pocket Toshi was made with Python at Rapid Mobile Application Prototyping workshop by Jürgen Scheible.
Pocket Toshi in practice
The first mode of use
A midi chimes (1 octave) placed vertically on the right side of the screen
and 4 percussion samples placed on the left side of the screen.
A round-shaped cursor detecting motion (tilting) based on values
from the N95 accelerometer.
When the cursor hits a key on the right side of the screen it triggers the corresponding sound object (midi/wav). The same happens on the left side of the screen with
the four drum sounds. There is also an additional gesture sound (a clap)
to be found when moving the phone rapidly along its Y axis.
The second mode of use
Using the record loop command on the application menu, the user can change the
chimes/drums view into a percussion-led interface modifying both
the sounds and the graphics on the go.
In this mode of use tilting the mobile phone triggers a different drum sample in
each of the four corners of the screen. The drums are recorded from the first sound
played to the point when the user chooses to stop recording on the application menu.
After the drum loop is finished the application switches back to the chimes/drums view. The chimes and drums can now be played on top of the ready made drum beat
by choosing play loop on the menu.
How it works
The program moves a round-shaped cursor on the screen according to the X, Y & Z values that it receives from the accelerometer. The cursor’s location on the screen triggers sounds.
The application has a menu where the user can choose to record a drum loop.
To keep the recording light the program uses two variable lists: when the cursor activates a sound, the program writes the name of the sound to one list and the time that has elapsed from the start of the recording to the other list.
Once the recording is stopped the user can play the recorded loop in the background. The playback starts a new timer that compares the values of the time variable list, playing the corresponding sounds from the sound list. This approach enables the use of very long recordings with minimal memory use.
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