iPhone Orchestra

I have only been to a handful of orchestral performances in my time. Some of them were exhilarating and others were boring; the Boston Pops being the most enjoyable. However, I was consistently impressed at the ability for so many different sounds to assimilate in a coherent manner.

Over the years orchestras have tried to keep up with musical trends and popular interest. Performances have ranged from entire renditions of musical scores from main stream films to Video Game theme songs:

Eminence Orchestra performing songs from the video game Metal Gear Solid

Video Game Orchestra performing at the Berklee Performance Center, Boston

Students from Standford University led by their conductor, Ge Wang have taken it to the next level with their group MoPhO(short for Mobile Phone Orchestra) using, what else, iPhones.

Wired's Erin Biba goes into further detail, "MoPhO plays mostly improvisational pieces using an app that Wang built (and hopes to make public soon). Each player touches a button onscreen to select a tone, then tilts, twists, or shakes the mobile phone to change pitch and timbre..." (full article).