CU student tapping into one-hand band
Using his thumb, Kristof Klipfel begins to play the kick drum. He intersperses the beat with a high hat by tapping his pointer finger on the table in front of him, and adds claps by tapping his middle finger.
“All right, I like that,” the 22-year-old University of Colorado Boulder student says, slapping the edge of his hand on the table, stopping an audio recording of the rhythmic sounds.
The beat begins to loop. Using his thumb again, Klipfel hits a button on the gloves he is wearing, changing the “instrument” from percussion to piano. He starts to mess around with sounds, tapping his digits on the table until he creates a melody he likes. Slapping his hand down, he is recording again.
In a matter of minutes, Klipfel plays several instruments until a full song takes shape.
Another student walks into the room at the school’s ATLAS Center for Media, Arts and Performance. “Beat master Kristof in the house,” he says, appreciatively.
Klipfel wraps up his song with a smile. “It’s fun.”
Klipfel left Tuesday for Japan, where he will show his gloves and other technology he has helped develop at a student design competition that is part of the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interactions conference in Yokohama.
The gloves are the culmination of about 150 hours of work, starting as a project for a Wearable Technologies course and continuing on to something more.
“Pretty much all of my free time was going into trying to make this work,” he said of the digital music makers. “I didn’t have a job at the time. This was my job.”
He describes the gloves as a composition tool. They allow him to change octaves, instruments and sounds with the click of a button, create sounds by tapping velocity-sensitive pads on the edge of his fingertips, and apply varying effects, such as changing frequency or volume, by curling a finger.
“Once you start making music, it’s very cool to tactically just bend your finger and hear the music change,” Klipfel said.
The gloves are prototypes. There are kinks to work out. But Klipfel can preset the instruments he wants to use and the effects he wants to map to his fingers. He can apply those effects by bending and straightening his digits. He can play an instrument for eight measures or an entire song, and add layers of instruments without removing the gloves or fiddling with his computer’s music application.
“Once you start making music, it’s very cool to tactically just bend your finger and hear the music change.” Kristof Klipfel, who says he spent 150 hours working to perfect the gloves
In as quick as 30 seconds he can layer eight separate tracks, he said.
Klipfel thought of creating the gloves while laying in bed one night, frustrated by the clunky process of switching between his computer and keyboard while composing music. He designed the gloves to be ergonomically friendly. They are controlled using natural motions and they respond quickly, providing a smooth and streamlined approach to composing.
Klipfel is new to the piano. With the gloves, he can spend more time thinking about the music he is playing rather than staring at a keyboard, focused on hitting the right keys. He doesn’t have to worry about memorizing the right scales for blues or jazz — they can be set up ahead of time. Additionally, a program maps each note to the nearest beat, creating a more professional sound.
“This is a really good tool for people who don’t want to understand everything about music but still want to make something that sounds good,” he said.
Klipfel has been playing instruments since he was 12 years old, starting with the saxophone and eventually teaching himself trombone, tuba, percussion, clarinet, bassoon and piano. He has been a member of several bands of different styles.
In high school, he became enthralled with electronic dance music, a style he describes as open and free with no restraints. He began creating his own tracks. All he needed was a computer and he could compose anywhere, at anytime. His gloves function in the same way. “I’m always drumming,” he said, whether it’s tapping his fingers against his steering wheel while driving or on a desk during class.
Now, he can take those idle moments and put them to use.
Other frustrated composers, however, will have to wait a while to get their own musical gloves. (Although gloves that create only keyboard sounds are commercially available.)
“I would love to put more time in this and create a stable version,” Klipfel said. First, however, there is schoolwork and a summer internship and, eventually, a job where he will earn enough money to pay back student loans. “The things that pull me back (from full-time development) is that life is still there and I need to work jobs and make money.”
For now, the gloves and composing remain passion projects, perfected one beat at a time.