Introduction

Our project set out to help new musicians play an instrument without having the instrument in their possession. This would allow the musician to practice away from home or allow them to try an instrument out without having to purchase it. Using a pair of gloves, seven flex sensors, and a pressure sensor we were able to simulate a musical instrument. Our system emulates an alto sax but could theoretically be expanded to other instruments. The flex sensors are attached to the gloves and fed into comparators. The system reads the values of the flex sensors to determine what fingers are bent and then decides what note should be played. The notes are played through a speaker using Direct Digital Synthesis when the foot pedal is pressed. We also included an LCD that displays the notes of the hit single “Hot Cross Buns”. The notes will turn green when the user plays the correct note and red when the user plays the incorrect note. The number of correct notes is then tallied and displayed once the song is completed.