Wearable technology can often be very interesting, but nothing is more interesting than wearable technology that can create art. There have been a number of wearable products over the years that have been aimed at creating music, but this is certainly one of the most interesting, and one of the most advanced. Drop The Beat is a wearable drum pad that can be rearranged and changed to suit the drummers liking.
The man behind Drop the Beat is Wesley Chau, an industrial design student at the Rhode Island School of Design. He developed the vest for musicians and DJ’s to be able to better add performance to their shows, and says he was inspired by the film Home of the Brave, in particular a scene in which a dancers movements appear to trigger rhythms.
The vest itself is made up of 4 pads made of neoprene, each of them attached to the vest via an outer covering of velcro, meaning that each of the pads can be moved to wherever the drummer wants on the vest. Each of the drum pads is connected to a piezo sensor which is sensitive to touch, from a light touch, to a hard hit. These sensors are in turn attached to a controller that converts the signal into a MIDI signal which can be sent to a computer running appropriate music software, such as Garage Band.
The future of Drop The Beat involves wireless controlling, which would be great for the user to not have to stay connected to a computer all the time, and be able to move around more. In the meantime, Drop The Beat is a great new invention which could prove to be very interesting, particularly for performers.
