Time's up for the Myo? The smartwatch as a ubiquitous alternative for audio-gestural analyses

William Francis, Wilson and Granieri, Niccolo and Ali-MacLachlan, Islah (2023) Time's up for the Myo? The smartwatch as a ubiquitous alternative for audio-gestural analyses. In: 23rd International Workshop on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, 31st May - 3rd June 2023, Mexico City, Mexico.

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Abstract

The utility of gestural technologies in broadening analytical- and expressive-interface possibilities has been documented extensively; both within the sphere of NIME and beyond. Wearable gestural sensors have proved integral components of many past NIMEs. Previous implementations have typically made use of specialist, IMU and EMG based gestural technologies. Few have proved, singularly, as popular as the Myo armband. An informal review of the NIME archives found that the Myo has featured in 21 NIME publications, since an initial declaration of the Myo’s promise as “a new standard controller in the NIME community” by Nyomen et al. in 2015. Ten of those found were published after the Myo’s discontinuation in 2018, including three as recently as 2022. This paper details an assessment of smartwatch-based IMU and audio logging as a ubiquitous, accessible alternative to the IMU capabilities of the Myo armband. Six violinists were recorded performing a number of exercises using VioLogger; a purpose-built application for the Apple Watch. Participants were simultaneously recorded using a Myo armband and a freestanding microphone. Initial testing upon this pilot dataset indicated promising results for the purposes of audio-gestural analysis; both implementations demonstrated similar efficacy for the purposes of MLP-based bow-stroke classification.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Identification Number:	10.5281/zenodo.11189306
Dates:	Date Event 1 June 2023 Accepted 3 June 2023 Published Online
Uncontrolled Keywords:	NIME, MYO Armband, IMU, Gestural Analysis, Musicology, Violin, Apple Watch, Smart Watch
Subjects:	CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-01 - computer science
Divisions:	Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment > College of Computing
Depositing User:	Gemma Tonks
Date Deposited:	15 Jul 2024 18:31
Last Modified:	15 Jul 2024 18:31
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/15664

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