The animated submission Trade Secrets from the Violin Masters is the genesis of an initiative to accurately capture and replicate the overall playing characteristics of the Great Master Violinists. IMIT's initial goal was to develop technologies which could be used to re plicate the actual physical movements and audible sound created by the fingers, hands and arms of the human body in exact detail during a live performance given by a violinist. Then, this data would be applied and drive a computer generated 3D human model replica of the performing artist in order to allow interactive study of the specific play­ing characteristics of each specific artist with in an interactive 3D environment.
The process of capturing the data proved to be an ambitious, improbable and near impossible task. Ten years were spent in research and development to design a computer program which could display the different aspects of weight inertia, finger pressure on the strings, grip of the fingertips, and the bio­medical aspects of muscle and nerve activity, as well as the as pects of joint rotations. To capture the physiological playing characteristics, several different types of data capture would need to be coordinated during an actual live performance so that the specific sound generated through the physiological activities would remain in synch and reflect the specific per­formance.
Serveral leading motion capture companies worked with IMIT on the project without achieving any measurable success in capturing the subtle, refined or diverse motions of the fingers and hands. The subtle motions of the hands and fingers on a violin operate within a spatial microcosm where the slightest movement of the fingertip changes the timbre, intonation, etc. of the note. To capture these subtle movements required a highly sensitive system which could be calibrated to operate within this type of setting. The objective was to "replicate" the specific motions made by a specific violinist rather then create a model that might only "look" realistic. Each expert artist would immediately detect any changes to the sound or the movements which were not accurate. To reach this objective, the motion data captured would need to be complete and holistic in its raw state since no post-process editing of the motion data would be permitted. The limits of the hardware and software proved to contain many challenges and barriers in reaching this goal.

Laurence Leydier (CDN) is CEO of IMIT: Heralded as a child prodigy on the violin, he has performed as a concert violinist throughout various parts of the world. Utilizing his expertise on the violin as the underpinning from which to documement the various workings of the violin, he has over the past 21 years developed the HELP process (a comrehensive approach to education for the violin and the violinist).