EMISurfer

Kyle Mattimore and Nate Jones

Create ambient soundscapes with an electric guitar and electromagnetic interference from a smartphone

A classic annoyance for any engineer recording single-coil guitars, I accidentally discovered that the EMF noise from a smartphone sounded pretty cool through a hot-driven amp and a wah-wah. We created an app designed to enable any guitar player to pull out their phone and create cool soundscapes- for sampling, ambient pads, or live looping.

Usage: Hold the phone near the active guitar pickup(s). Manipulate the sounds created with the application interface, physical placement, and the rest of the guitar signal chain.

We spent a lot of time trying to manipulate all the different IO in a smartphone to create the most interesting sounds. The antennas, surprisingly, were not that interesting, but different kinds of resource load and screen redrawing were! Due to hardware differences, every device model sounds different! Phone bodies have different 'hot zones' that emit noise.

Demo Video: https://youtu.be/EmabWZc8NY4 This is using several effects pedals seen on the pedalboard, traditionally used for electric guitar. We also used a looper in the demo video to record a song with layers of music and noise.