Abstract : We present a musical instrument, named the Embodied Musical Instrument (EMI) which allows musicians to perform free gestures with the upper–body including hands and fingers thanks to 3D vision sensors, arranged around the tabletop. 3D interactive spaces delimit the boundaries in which the player performs metaphorical gestures in order to play with sound synthesis engines. A physical-based sound synthesis engine and a sampler have been integrated in the system in order to manipulate sound morphologies in the context of electro-acoustic and electronic composition.