Orchestras Make Mobile Music with iPhones

Back in the day, orchestras required instruments. Now, orchestras are playing iPhones.

One such orchestra is The Stanford University ensemble called MoPhO, which is short for Mobile Phone Orchestra. Its conductor is obsessed with making electronic music as mobile as possible. The iPhone holds plenty of potential for what kind of music can be created and how it can be played.

MoPhO plays mostly improvisational pieces using an application that Stanford’s Conductor built and hopes to make public soon. Here is how it works: Each player touches a button onscreen to select a tone, then twists, tilts, or shakes the mobile phone to change the pitch.

At January’s Macworld, MoPhO held their first show with 10 iPhone players rocking the intro to “Stairway to Heaven” wearing fingerless gloves with Altec Lansing Orbit speakers sewn in