--- title: "This Guy Hacked His Prosthetic Arm to Control Musical Instruments" description: "This German professor of psychology found a way to hack his prosthetic arm so that it could control electronic musical instruments." date: "2020-02-17" modified: "2020-02-17" authors: - name: "Jon Christian" job_title: "Executive Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jonc" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/guy-hacked-prosthetic-arm-control-musical-instruments" categories: - "Health & Medicine" - "Prosthetics and Devices" tags: - "music" - "prosthetics" - "synthesizers" - "the digest" --- # This Guy Hacked His Prosthetic Arm to Control Musical Instruments ![This German a way to hack his prosthetic arm so that it could control electronic musical instruments.]() *\Image: Bertolt Meyer\* ## Good Arm Bertolt Meyer, a professor of psychology at the Chemnitz University of Technology, was born without a lower left arm. Years ago, that might have been seen as an impediment to learning a musical instrument. But in a riveting [new video](), Meyer describes how he instead turned his prosthetic arm into a musical superpower — by controlling synthesizers with his mind. ## Music Man Meyers uses a high tech i-LIMB prosthetic arm that turns electrical signals from his muscles into dexterous wrist and finger movements. Meyer is an avid DJ and electronic musician, though, and he found that the arm made it difficult to tweak the small dials on his synthesizers. That problem gave him an idea: Find a way to hack his prosthetic arm so that it could control audio equipment using, essentially, his thoughts. ## SynLimb To pull it off, he teamed up with the engineers at musical equipment studio KOMA Elektronik, who helped him fabricate an attachment that can replace the mechanical hand on his prostheses. But instead of being designed to manipulate objects, the new attachment — he calls it the SynLimb — translates his neural signals into instructions for electronic instruments. The whole video is worth a watch, but if you want to skip to the part where Meyer controls synthesizers using his brainpower, it starts around [the 6:15 mark](). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSKBtEBRWi4 ## Author I'm responsible for editing, assigning, and scouting at Futurism, as well as occasionally writing for the site. That work involves keeping an eye on a wide range of narratives and issues, but over the past few years I've become increasingly interested in how AI is shaping the future of media, the web, and information itself. My day-to-day often involves collaborating on reporting and commentary projects bylined by my colleagues, but I try to find time to do my own reporting as well; stories I've broken for Futurism have been cited by publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Wired, Ars Technica, New York Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, Bloomberg, and more. I grew up in Southern Vermont and attended Vanderbilt University. Prior to Futurism, I contributed to outlets including the Boston Globe, Vice, Wired, Slate, the Atlantic, the Outline, Ars Technica and more, and did stints in farming and food service. I currently live in Brooklyn, New York, and in my free time I enjoy pinball, word games, cycling, running, and music production. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()