Vibing with the music - 27th September 2023

Music lovers, including the hearing-impaired, soaked up a classical concert in New York. Thanks to ground breaking software by Music: Not Impossible, members of the deaf community could appreciate the concert via vibrations from wearing haptic harnesses and wrist and ankle bracelets placed on the skin.

Flavia Naslausky heads the business development team at Music: Not Impossible.

Flavia Naslausky: "As you know already, this was designed with and inspired by the deaf community. And along this journey, though, we realised that everybody wants to use it. This is about shared connections, shared experiences, bringing people together that otherwise wouldn't be together."

Following years of research, Music: Not Impossible managed to successfully engineer a software which composes, converts and transmits wireless audio vibrations with near zero latency to the bodies of those wearing the equipment. According to the company's co-founder Patrick Hanlon, the device is capable of being altered for different genres of music and concerts.

Patrick Hanlon: "For an orchestra, I'm gonna have the violins across the chest and we're gonna put the cello and the bass elements in the back, and then we'll have some horns and stuff over the shoulders. But if I was to use it for a techno gig, it would be kick drum, snare, hats maybe on the shoulders, so it's a little bit of a different approach."

Not only can wearers feel the music, communicated by vibrations to 8 zones on the body, but they can also adjust the vibration intensity. This equipment, which indicates intensity by colour changes in LED lights, is aptly described as a 'Surround Body Experience.'

Being a deaf person and a composer of musical theatre, Jay Zimmerman was the perfect fit to be involved in testing the 2018 prototype of the equipment.

Jay Zimmerman: "It was super exciting. I was super excited because it has come a long way. Originally, it was actually wired up like I'm gonna be electrocuted. And now they're separate. So it was very, very exciting, but I still feel, you know, down the road, I'm always like, we wanna go, we wanna take it to the next level."

Music: Not Impossible has revolutionised the concert experience for the hearing-impaired with its 'Surround Body Experience' device, a far cry from having had to rely upon holding an inflated balloon, during the show, to feel the vibrations of the music. Celebrity musician Pharrell weighed in, calling the technology the future of music.