MotionKit

Free software dedicated to the practice of Music and Sound Arts.

MotionKit

MotionKit is a software package dedicated to the practice of music and sound arts. Strongly oriented towards new digital practices, MotionKit integrates motion detection and permits the discovery of musical gestures. It can be controlled or interact with most of the industry's interfaces.
Conceived jointly by the company BrainModular and La Muse en Circuit, Centre national de création musicale, MotionKit integrate gestural recognition into pedagogical tools by using simple webcams. These solutions propose new pedagogical uses in terms of artistic and musical expressions. MotionKit offers innovative practices for a variety of audiences.
This software allows anyone to create music, playing with sounds, to understand the world of sound around us and so to access the music through new technologies.
MotionKit is the result of the meeting between BrainModular and La Muse en Circuit (national music creation center).

La Muse en Circuit has extensive expertise in digital audio creation and creative music transmission practices. Its educational work has always relied on consumer technologies and tools for live performances. The BrainModular company has been developing the Usine Hollyhock software for twenty years with efficiency and reliability in mind. This offers the professional user an efficient tool for the practice of music on stage or interactive installations.

Ready to play

MotionKit features about 20 instruments. Each instrument allows to play with sounds, modulate their parameters, create musical sequences and drive the whole by input interfaces.

Simple and Fun

MotionKit features about 20 instruments. Each instrument allows to play with sounds, modulate their parameters, create musical sequences and drive the whole by input interfaces.

Creative

They are instruments whose purpose is to stimulate creativity. They usually have simple parameters that the user must alter in order to learn about the composition.

Playful

They are instruments whose main objective is to allow the user to approach the sound parameters (height, duration, timbre, etc.) in a fun angle.

Users

Current musical practices are most often confronted with learning issues; learning an instrument and/or learning a software, a technology. MotionKit is designed to propose a musical practice to each of us: children, adults, teachers and pedagogues. It allows to play in an autonomous way, but also in group in order to encourage collective games. The software offers access to digital music creation and can be adapted to different users, from the beginner to the experienced musician. MotionKit provides innovative pedagogical content for the discovery of music. It offers specific sounds for pedagogical uses, but it also integrates the possibility to use its own sound banks. It can be used in music classes to develop musical culture or analysis, as well as in media libraries to enhance the value of the musical collections of institutions.

Features

MotionKit is a modular software giving immediate to a twenty instruments grouped under different categories (see below). Each instrument offers to play with sounds, to adjust the parameters, create musical sequences and drive all by input interfaces. MotionKit uses simple graphics for the user to directly enter a music game without prior learning. MotionKit is an evolution of the professional software Usine Hollyhock by BrainModular.

Gestures

We have integrated the devices (human interface device - HID) in order to facilitate its use, to make it a real instrument and to bring the playful notion of instrumental playing (with webcams, joysticks, gamepads, MIDI controllers, touch screens, etc.). MotionKit allows to generate musical gestures from the technologies of our everyday life. Real-time motion detection by a simple webcam contributes to this desire for flexibility. Based on technologies coming from machine learning, MotionKit can now be driven by hand movements. In the future, all the articulations of the human body will be potential controllers. Gesture recognition technologies now makes possible to go beyond the use of tools (such as the video game controller) to drive music software directly through movement. This leads to a new conception of instrumental gesture, choreography, scenography... for EVERYONE!

MotionKit Motion Tracking

Real time motion tracking with a simple webcam.

MotionKit Instruments

Take a look on some pictures of MotionKit.