New materials like conductive thread, piezoresistive textiles and carbon fiber make it possible to build compelling
new gesture and musical instrument controllers in minutes and hours. This document showcases some ideas using these new materials.

The most frequently asked question at my Maker Faire presentation of these was: where do I get the fabrics?

The conductive fabrics and plastic (velostat) can be found at the retailer http://www.lessemf.com. Some of the silver fabrics and zippers can be bought from http://www.shieldextrading.net/. The pressure sensitive fabric is made by http://www.eeonyx.com. The conductive paper is retailed by http://www.pasco.com.

The next most frequently asked question was: Where can I learn to do that? One good way is to come to my sensor workshop which is open to the public and taught during the third week of July. Oops. The workshop is full this year. Contact me for other opportunities to learn.

Then everybody wanted to know what the controllers "sound like". Well that depends on the synthesis you control with them. I will be blogging videos illustrating some useful mappings in the coming months.