ICM Final Project Proposition

As one who holds a Bachelor's degree in music, I could have greatly benefited from some kind of ear training software. Plucking a guitar string knowing which note I was fretting did me little good, and 20 minutes of group training in music theory class twice a week didn't help much either. Although plenty of software is available, making my own is training me to think about the user, the interface, and working with games in general. This will also be an exercise in interfacing with new MIDI instruments being built in Physical Computing by Adam Nash, Charles Amis, and I. Since these instruments are completely new to us and probably the rest of the world, we're going to need some help learning how to play them. This ear training software will allow us to connect our instruments to Processing, and instead of clicking the correct note with a mouse, we will play the correct note with our instrument. These exercises will yield two results: our ears will become much better at hearing correct pitches, a skill useful in several musical applications, and we will develop the technique of our new instruments.

The software has two parts: intervals and series. The former has yet to be built. However, here is a look at the screen for note series training:
Level 1 corresponds to a one note series, Level 2 corresponds to a two note series, and so on. The user can begin at the level of choice, and each level can be played the default number of times, or extended by the user's determination. Once a choice is made to play the screen is simple and looks like this:
You can see a C Major scale in the photo. Later on it will be easy to add different keys and modes.

An important exercise for me will be trying to use a Wiimote in place of the traditional mouse. Time and money will tell if I get around to doing this, but I believe the Wiimote is going to be an important device outside the Nintendo Wii in the near future.

I was thinking about ways to flip the current idea around. The game in its current state gives you a random note or notes, and you have to decide which is correct. What if you already know what the note is? How could you use that? I thought about what I already know, which is primarily stringed instruments. Knowing what the note is will not help me, because I know where to find it on the instrument. I do not know how to sing, and given a note I could probably not accurately represent it with my own voice. I heard of a pitch-to-MIDI device that may be able to help achieve this goal.

The vocal training aspect takes me back to an idea I had long ago about software that trains you how to sing and play like your favorite artist. One of my favorite artists is Bob Dylan, and I think an interesting exercise would be learn how to sing and play harmonica like he does. This would involve programming his wonderful inaccuracies. The inaccuracies are one of the few things he has that reminds us that he is still human, but they also add rich character to his music.