Microsoft’s GRAMMY’s activation revolved primarily around its interactive Microsoft Music Box – an innovative Kinect- and Surface-powered keyboard experience.
The GRAMMYs official technology partner’s idea for the Music Box is to enable people to express their mood via body movement and then turn these gestures into music.
The Microsoft Music Box team hacked the Kinect to create the project software – which uses skeletal tracking to interpret a person’s body movements on a three-dimensional grid.
For instance, an upward wave of an arm produces high notes, while dipping downward toward the ground results in lower notes.
The device then translates those movements using open-source software that we’ve custom written into music.
Kinect interprets each person’s movements and aims to produce a beautiful, emotional piece of music based on your personal mood and expression.
Microsoft MusicBox from Interbrand Clients on Vimeo.
The Microsoft Music Box keyboard experience was installed at LA LIVE Plaza, next to the GRAMMYs venue, between 6 and 8 February and Microsoft invited the public to try Microsoft Music Box for themselves.
Alongside the installation, instructors from the West Hollywood School of Rock were on hand to help facilitate the experience by working with consumers to reproduce 2015 Grammy-nominated songs.
The tech giant partnered on the project with Interband and YesYesNo
‘Everyone has an emotional and a powerful connection to music, but it’s a pretty hard thing to pick up and learn,’ explains Ross Clugston, design director at Interbrand.
‘But the joy that comes from creating music … everyone should have access to a way of creating and doing that.’
Microsoft’s sponsorship of the music extravaganza also saw its Bing search engine present an interactive guide to GRAMMY nominees.
This included a predictive award winners tool for the main categories – including Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Best New Artist – for those searching GRAMMYs on Bing.
Users simply selected a category in the Bing GRAMMYs carousel tosee who is nominated and who Bing predicts will win.
This activation strand also enabled Bing users to go beyond the nominated singlees and select one of the nominated Albums of the Year to listen to the songs on that album, as well as other albums by that artist.
It also included an interactive sing-along option with the winning tunes that sees Bing show the lyrics and video side by side.
Microsoft also used its partnership to run its ‘Reinvent’ TV ad for the Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Comment
The activation aims to explore the possibilities at the intersection of technology and creative expression and kick-start conversation about the intersection of between technology, music and the future.
Particularly engaging with kids about how they think music will be made in the future, and what the future of music will be.
There are some similarities between Microsoft Music Box and its interactive art installation called the Cube (which it showcased at Seattle’s Decibel Festival and which aimed to make the viewers part of the art).
Both these projects used event partnerships to try and bring to life Microsoft’s core goal of ‘empowering people to achieve’.
Rival Apple also attempted to leverage interest in The Grammys and engage with the telecast’s audience not only bying the iPad as a musician’s best friend during the GRAMMYs pre-show telecast, but also by debuting a new commercial or the iPad featuring musicians Elliphant, Riton and The Gaslamp Killer during the show itself.
The documentary-style 60-second spot, which was filmed entirely on an iPad by French filmmaker and music video director So Me, follows the three musicians writing, recording, producing and remixing a new remix of Elliphant’s track “All Or Nothing.”
Apple co-produced the spot with creative ad agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab and sourced musical talent for the ad by seeking musicians who already included their iPad in their creative process.
Links
Microsoft YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/user/Microsoft
Bing
School Of Rock
Apple Make Music With iPad
http://www.apple.com/s/aR4m2I2k5v
Grammys Website
Grammys YouTube
