This blog has been eerily quiet of late, although that doesn’t mean I haven’t been up to anything. More things are being finished within the imminent future so here’s some teasers of things to come.

First up, I’ve been asked to present a keynote paper at this years Sound, Sight, Space and Play (SSSP), at De Montfort Uni, where I used to work many years ago. Here’s the abstract  for the paper:

Real-time notation through Brain-Computer Music Interfacing

Introduction

Brain waves have long been of interest to musicians as a viable means of input to control a musical system. Until recently research has focused on the voluntary control of alpha waves [1] [2], and event-related potentials time locked to stimuli, both of which fall short of explicit real-time control. This paper presents on-going research into utilising EEG techniques from studies in neuroscience in the development of a Brain-Computer Music Interface (BCMI) as a precision controller in composition and performance.

Meaning in Brain Waves

Affordable and more portable hardware and faster signal processing has widened access for the development of bespoke BCMI tools, as well as presented fresh obstacles to overcome [3]. Still, when working with electrical signals so minute, complex and highly prone to interference more work is needed to extract meaning within EEG. This paper identifies methods for alleviating these issues and approaches to mapping within BCMI systems.

Mind Trio

This paper presents the BCMI performance piece Mind Trio, allowing a BCMI user to conduct a score, presented to a musician in real-time.

The automated composition process will take a set of pre-composed musical cells, which will continuously change slightly, by means of transpositions, change in tempo, replacement of notes, etc; guided by conductors explicit decisions.

References 

1. Ortiz Perez MA, Knapp RB (2009) Biotools: Introducing a Hardware and Software Toolkit for fast implemetation of Biosignals for Musical Applications. Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval. Sense of Sounds: 4th CMMR Copenhagen, Denmark

 

2. Grierson M, Kiefer C Better Brain Interfacing for the Masses: Progress in Event-Related Potential Detection using Commercial Brain Computer Interfaces. 29th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Vancouver, Canada, 2011.

 

3. Eaton J, Miranda E New Approaches in Brain-Computer Music

Interfacing: Mapping EEG for Real-Time Musical Control. In: Music, Mind, and Invention Workshop, New Jersey, USA, 2012.