An Irishman's Diary

The march of science is probably unstoppable and, for the most part, this is a good thing. But every so often scientists achieve a breakthrough that, because of its potential for misuse, you wish they hadn't. So it was with nuclear fission and cloning. And so it is with a new invention from Australia: a T-shirt designed to allow air-guitar players produce real music.

Yes, scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have created a shirt with sensors that "detect and interpret" the wearer's arm movements and then connect them wirelessly to pre-recorded guitar samples.

Thus the "musician" can jump around his bedroom/office/Luas carriage, or wherever, playing imaginary chords but generating actual music. The sound is "just like an original MP3", according to the inventors.

The obvious question about this is: why? Even aside from the risk that - as with cloning - the technology could fall into the wrong hands, you have to wonder what the point is. Not for the first time, science has found a solution to a non-existent problem. For which sane air-guitar player wants to have his arm movements detected and interpreted? Unless he has some idea of the correct chords, in which case he will probably be playing a real guitar instead of pretending.

No doubt the technology is forgiving in its interpretations. But even so: what was wrong with the traditional air-guitar method, by which you could make completely random arm movements and they would connect wirelessly to the music in your head? It wasn't broken, why fix it? The invention coincides, aptly or otherwise, with the 35th anniversary of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. A song beloved of air-guitar players everywhere, its popularity among would-be Jimmy Pages has been the cause of much suffering worldwide, especially among the staff of musical instrument stores. The phenomenon is wittily alluded to in one of Terry Pratchett's medieval sci-fi novels, in which a guitar shop owner hires a troll with instructions to pull the head off any customer who plays a song called Pathway to Paradise.

For years, Stairway to Heaven was dogged by claims that, when played backwards, it contained satanic messages. This seemed plausible, because the lyrics certainly didn't make any sense when played forwards. Apparently Robert Plant was inspired by a book on Celtic magic when he wrote them. But the most telling line is the part of the chorus that goes: "Wo-oh-oh-oh-oh". That's what somebody should have told him before he started.

Page's guitar solo, by contrast, has stood the test of time. And yet, imagine you're a Led Zeppelin fan at a reunion concert. You're mimicking what you think are the correct chord changes for Stairway, while shaking your imaginary hair. Then your treacherous MP3 T-shirt - perhaps confused by the head-banging - insists that what you're really playing is Rockin' All Over the World. You'd never live it down.

Incidentally, there was an amusing typo in the Reuters press release from Australia, that suggested the tee-shirt had "censors" in its sleeves. This would be a very good idea, if it were true. But as with cloning, the technology is probably too advanced to stop. Much as we appreciate their achievements, just occasionally one would wish that scientists could leave well enough alone.

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There was a grim inevitability that a band called Procol Harum would end up in court. The name sounds like one of those terms lawyers can't help using, eg: "I'm seeking an order of procol harum, your honour, because - verbum sat sapienti - my client is clearly non-compos mentis." Of course it should be spelt "Procul Harum", but presumably this was a ruse by the rock group to hide their classical schooling.

Misspellings are part of the culture of rock 'n' roll, in which to appear educated is death.

Hence the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, teeshirt censors, and so on. Even that most literate of song-writers, Bob Dylan, had to pretend he had never been to school, rhyming "road" with "knowed", to mention one example.

On the band's website, in what looks like a belated attempt to save their credibility, Procol Harum claim to have taken the name, in the mid-1960s, from their drug dealer's cat. But they're not fooling anybody, especially considering the current court case in London, in which their former organist is attempting to prove co-authorship of the 1967 hit, A Whiter Shade of Pale.

The band's frontman says he wrote the chord sequence based on Bach's Air on a G String. The plaintiff ripostes that his organ solo was inspired by Bach's Cantata no. 140. Say what you like about that other Latin-named band, Status Quo, but nobody ever accused them of reworking Bach in any of their three-chord hits. The story that they didn't know what their name meant at the time it was picked is believable.

There has been much debate about what, if anything, the lyrics of A Whiter Shade of Pale mean. But the song was an intriguing choice by Bertie Ahern when he listed his favourite records on RTÉ's Rattlebag programme last year. Which gives me an idea for this, National Science Week.

The Taoiseach's own lyrics are sometimes a mystery too, God knows. In fact, Dáil reporters often have to detect and interpret his body movements in order to have any chance of connecting, wirelessly or otherwise, with what he meant to say.

Could a specially designed shirt help? If so, there's a challenge here for scientists who really want to do some good.