When listening to rock music, people make “headbangings”. They move (bang) their heads according to the riffs of the song. This gave Laszlo Bardos and Stefan Korinek (from the Media Computing Group at RWTH Aachen University) the idea to let head movements play a guitar sample, so the headbanger affects how the song sounds by on his own.
They mapped the “size” of a head movement to the volume of the sample played and mapped also the time between a head movement downwards and a head movement upwards to the duration of the sample.
To measure the movements, accelerometers were attached to a helmet that the Bangarama players wear.
As Bangarama in this form could only play one note, a “virtual guitar” was added to the system. This guitar acts as a “airguitar” simulation – a instrument widely used by headbangers. The user just touches one of the three areas to have another note selected for headbanging.