[This looks pretty amazing. -egg]
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Gestrument, Shaping Music with Kinect, Touch, and Acoustic Ensembles [Videos]: 
Swiping through clouds of timbre and melody, using Gestrument is an experience of a different musical animal. Jesper Nordin and Kymatica / Jonatan Liljedahl created the iPad version, available now for ten bucks. But it’s worth looking at that side by side with Gestrument for Kinect, as the same metaphors can translate across input methods. Both employ a kind of meta-composition – instrument as conductor of musical structures, more than an object for exclusively solo expression.
What’s especially nice is hearing these digital, synthesized environments meld with acoustic instruments. The solution may not convince everyone yet, but there’s clearly potential for these digital instruments to join up with conventional chamber ensembles and acoustic instruments. (See the video below, a live concert with Trio Trespassing. Christophe Lebreton from GRAME in Lyon, France contributed to the development.)
And at the very least, Jesper Nordin’s development work and compositional experiments have earned him attention; the City of Stockholm has even recognized the app.
First, the iOS app:
And here’s a performance of the Kinect version, combined with an ensemble. (I’m curious, readers: sold one one more than the other? Neither?)
All reviews can be read on our Facebook page –
www.facebook.com/gestrument
Feature set of the iOS app include various options for control, sharing and collaboration, and support for file import/export, AudioCopy, MIDI, and now AudioBus:
• Play and compose music with the swipe of your finger
• Generate music within defined scales and rhythms
• Improvise freely within a fully controlled musical framework
• Use the internal GM sound bank or your favorite MIDI synthesizer, or load your own sf2 soundfonts.
• Use Gestrument to control other iOS apps or external MIDI programs through a MIDI interface ([Apple] Core MIDI enabled) or Network MIDI
• Virtual MIDI with MIDI clock in and out lets you sync with sequencers and DAWs
• Create and save your own presets and share with your friends or download new presets from www.gestrument.com
• Record what you play to audio and MIDI file
• Export recordings to AudioShare – audio document manager
• Copy recordings with AudioCopy
• Play back previous recordings, optionally looping
• Use Gestrument as a source synth in Audiobus
• Allow mixing with other apps, for example play a track in the
Music app and play along with it in Gestrument.
The idea is, you surf around scales and rhythms that are pre-mapped to the layout. Korg’s Kaossilator popularized some of these sorts of ideas in hardware; here, you have various other ways of setting up those kinds of layouts. The idea isn’t new: the traditional Autoharp has long allowed folk musicians easy access to harmonies simply by strumming. (Frets are a more complex solution to the same idea.)
You are a bit restricted in sound set, but with MIDI out, there’s room for growth.
More on the app: