Gimmick That "Lets You Play" Any Instruments - Um?

Suppose you had a saxophone and wanted to play it with no skill how to. And suppose again a gimmick were "rolled on" your wrist to let you play whatever instrument you've never learned how to play. What would your reaction be? "Beats me", you would say.

Here's a gimmick named "PossessedHand" that lets you do just that. A venture H2L from Chiyoda, Tokyo, developed and marketed it in March 2013 mostly to research laboratories. Let's cut out lengthy technical quibbles and have you experience just what it is.

The gimmick is about the size of a wristband-type hemadynamometer with 14 electrode pads to link to the gimmick proper with builtin circuit board. You roll two belts tight around either of your arms. That's all.

The operator will manipulate the PC keyboard to tune up the gimmick to the point where you start feeling your fingers move without you moving them - the second joint of your index finger "bend" all by itself, your five fingers bend and stretch as if at their will. The sense of feeling current running through you body reminds you of one of those low frequency therapy apparates.

You will be taught briefly how the saxophone produces sound and where to place your fingers. Off you go: you will play four bars of a melodic line "without you playing it"......

The whole idea was conceived in a hospital bed, confides the Chief Researcher Emi Tamaki of H2Lwhen she was recuperating. As earlier mentioned, the gimmick was sold mainly to research laboratories for 800,000 yen, several tens of them.

H2L just developed a later model "Unlimited Hand", this time for individual consumers mainly as game controllers, due for marketing in September this year.

"Possessed Hand" is a cool innovation. When Tamaki read her thesis on this device 2010, heaps of inquiries flooded her office. As you would imagine, this is no play tool but a serious invention with a broad potential for practical applications in various sectors of society.

News Source: Nikkei Shimbun