Mogees - Play the World

20.4.2016 by Miller Harrison

Imagine if you could turn a tree into a musical instrument. Or if the door in your flat was magically turned into a drum machine? Or your kitchen sink could be tuned to play a jingle in a synthy saw sound of your choosing? Dream no longer, friends, just slap on Mogees!

Mogees is a simple enough concept with almost limitless application. A small receiver designed to channel any object’s resonance through an interface into the digital realm. What does this mean exactly? Well, it means that an object small enough to carry around in your pocket can now make a table, door, park bench, car, bottle, or anything else you can see with your eyes, (possibly excluding birds-or at least the small ones) into a musical instrument.

Their eye and ear catching display nestled in between the drum and guitar areas of Musikmesse 2016 in Frankfurt showcased a Mogees bike that was remarkably musical in its resonance. The Bbop team all had a go and we were all blown away by this revolutionary little device.

Mogees is a small vibration sensor that sticks to almost any object, and captures every vibration you create as you play the object. The Mogees app for iOS records your different gestures, and can be trained to recognize different types of hits. You can also choose your sounds using their 4 sound engines, and can make gestures melodic, for instance, or assign them to midi sounds. Mogees can be synced with say, Ableton Live to synchronize your live performance with an existing track. In short, this thing does a lot.

We caught up with Conor from their London-based team to try out a bit of Mogee and learn about some of its applications first-hand.