Sound is about vibration. That’s all sound is really, and dance music of any sort depends on the regular pulse of a beat to be heard and felt to make your body move in time. And one of the best things about hearing music loud is the gut churn induced by bass. So it’s not much of a leap that mixing can be done by vibration alone. Taking the principle shown in the movie “It’s All Gone Pete Tong“, feelthebeat is a wearable bluetooth enabled metronome. Sounds a bit mad right? Read on.
There’s not a lot of info right now, but the principle is… errr sound. Here is the scant detail:
feelthebeat is a wearable metronome, that lets you feel the beat through vibrations. Remember the annoying sound of a traditional metronome? Those days are over! From now on you can focus on what’s most important and fun: Making music. Meanwhile, the beat comes to you naturally through vibrations, just like that!
Here’s how it works:
You connect feelthebeat via Bluetooth to your smartphone. You start our dedicated smartphone app and set up the metronome the way you like it. Once you press start, feelthebeat will vibrate in sync with the beat. It’s that easy!
Like I said the principle has merit. Back in the day, we used to mix with our ears and to some degree ‘feel’ the beat. But to essentially set a master clock on a phone and feed that to a vibrating wearable to help you feel the beat is a bit of an unknown quantity. Does this mean that everything has to be the same BPM? Given the variable pitch of mixing, I’m not convinced that this is an ideal solution for DJs. For musicians however, this could work incredibly well.
At this early stage, the developers are looking for feedback. And to make this easy, they’ve created a very simple form.
Thanks to Steve Bluck for the link on Facebook.
OVER TO YOU
Could this actually work? Would something buzzing against your body help you beatmatch without resorting to waveforms or a sync button? Is it a great supplement for the established technology of ears?
Like the Idea, But It needs to sync with my DAW. So that I don’t have to spend time tinkering with the metronome that should just be on when I need it.
I don’t really get it… Why all of the manufacturers are trying to get us NOT mix with our ears, it really works! For musicians it’s a very clever idea, but can 3 or 4 belts vibrate together (i mean for a whole band to be synced)
For djing I think it’s fairly useless. Maybe if it would sync to serato somehow and only the playing deck but I still fail to see a real use for it. If you can’t mix with all the help digital dj gear gives you at the moment….
unless it’s to sync multiples together i don’t see why the phone should have to get involved. seems like a lot of processing power to drive a metronome
can’t you buy them in Pub Toilets for about 4 quid???