I guess this is borderline to being an announcement, but I'll play it safe and place it here. I defended my master thesis in music therapy at Aalborg University, Denmark, today. I thought I would share some of it with you here
The title of the thesis is: 'At Spille Musik i Luften' = 'To Play Music in The Air'. The thesis is about how MIDI-technology can be used in active music therapy with children with severe mental retardation (IQ 20-34) or profound mental retardation (IQ < 20). Active means, that these children, who might not even understand the meaning of their own name and might only be able to turn their heads, has to be given the possibility to actually play music together with the therapist - without direct physical aid (like holding the hand of the child).
Some of the technology covered is optical sensors and ultra sound reflection sensors. Scope also has a central position in the thesis. In part, because I made a very simple modular patch which converts incoming CC messages to an 8 note scale (+ silence for the ninth position) - playing (at the moment) sine notes with adjustable attack, release and decay. I couldn't have done this without BC Modular.
I am sure someone else could do it much much more elegant, but I didn't find anything available that did the trick. And this thing is ready for clinical action as is. The ideal thing would be a stand-alone device, which can convert CC messages into Note on/off messages - with settings for timing, number of notes in the scale and customizable scales in terms of which notes to include. But I don't have the skill set to achieve that.
The thesis had three research questions of which on was of strictly technical matter (the others where about therapeutic). Part of my conclusion for the tech question was, that the Scope platform is a suitable basis for the sound generating part (the other part is the sensor part) of a MIDI set-up for music therapy with these children.
And now, I must soon start to learn to sleep again
Immanuel
