The act of enjoying music has typically been a passive thing, especially in this day and age. However, how often have people walked down the street, humming a little tune they’ve created that, while completely off in hummed tone, may be pitch-perfect in their mind?
Alternatively, what of those who are not used to thinking of music as a passive experience? People who, for whatever reason, may no longer be capable of playing an instrument, whether it be due to injury, illness, or age? Should they be condemned to a world of passive enjoyment, a world they had taken a great deal of providing to others?
Enter Musicality, a new way to create sound and song. Utilizing both an Emotiv EPOC headset and Arduino, Musicality can simulate the improvisation of process that can and does occur in music. Typically, musical improv calls from the depths of your mind what knowledge of music you have, and combines that with known instrumental responses, such as playing a piano or singing. Musicality recreates this procedure, taking notes you consciously think of and playing them back to you in near real time.
In order to come to fruition, this project requires:
- Emotiv EPOC headset and related physical components
- EPOC Control Panel
- Processing (the software)
- oscP5 library for Processing
- Mind Your OSCs
- Arduino (hardware)
- 8 ohm speaker
- 100 ohm resistor
- Hook-up wire
- Computer
- Patience
Examining both Arduino’s tone tutorial/example and hyperRitual’s Processing + EPOC via OSC, a combination of the two should be possible.
The computer, using Mind Your OSCs, translates the EPOC data delivered to the EPOC Control Panel by the Emotiv EPOC headset into Open Sound Control messages (OSCs). From there, the OSCs are interpreted by the Processing code made for Arduino using the oscP5 library to generate sound. The electrical signal for the sound runs through the pin to the speaker, where the sound is then released as an audible noise.
Musicality, a documented process hopefully coming soon to a web near you!
