Ari and I are working together on a project tentatively titled Tapper. The idea came from observing people on the subway who seem very engaged in the music they listen to, by singing, dancing, or tapping their fingers on the walls, poles, seats, their knees, etc. We decided to focus on this last action, and to create a portable musical instrument played by performing the natural action of tapping your fingers to the beat. 
Tapping is a natural response to listening to music and we thought that it could be interesting to actually sequence samples and create music through this action. The action of tapping along with a song seemed like an effective way of turning music appreciators into music producers. We decided to use a glove because we wanted the device to be portable, non-obtrusive, and usable on any surface. Tapper will communicate with a sampler using a common protocol such as MIDI or OSC so that it can interface with any software or platform. Ideally, we would like this to be a portable device like a cellphone or iPod.
The tapping action will be captured using force sensing resistors (FSRs). These seem like the natural choice as we would need to record the different strengths of the taps.
We performed some tests with a rudimentary prototype to get a feel for the action, but also to see the range of values we would get and if that range would change depending on the finger we used.
According to our graphs:
- The FSRs capture the strength and range of the taps appropriately when hooking them up with a 22K Ω resistor.
- The range captured seems pretty consistent across all the fingers.
 
 
