WyyMi

Woodwind on the iPhone

Impressive technology combined with incredible skill.

Playing with Virtual Fire

Another day and another innovative use of the iPhone though this one is purely decorative. It is the Smule Sonic Lighter

I'm not sure how this could be turned into anything useful in cerebellum training though for a severly autistic child, learning to control themselves enough to blow out a virtual candle maybe a major step forward.

Tokyo Jogging

A quick link to someone who has created a jogging game using Wii Remotes and Google Earth: Tokyo Jogging.

More iPhone Musical Instruments

This is another example of how the iPhone can be turned into a musical instrument.

iPhone Music

This clip, from Boing Boing Gadgets, demonstrates a simple musical tone generator using the iPhone's accelerometer to control the note. The noise it makes isn't very pleasant and it is more of a proof-of-concept that a real application. However, it is a good example of the technology that WyyMi wants to develop. A movement based, musical application that not only helps the user develop coordination skills but also helps with auditory and rhythmic training.

Hopefully by October I will be clear of my current workload and be able to start work developing WyyMi's own proof-of-concept device. I'm giving myself until Christmas to get a basic prototype developed so stay tuned, I will be looking to guinea pigs soon.

Tone Deafness and Bad Singing

Brief note to highlight an article on the causes of poor singing from Scientific American.

...suggests that poor music perception is actually just one of four possible causes of tuneless warbling. Yes, bad hearing might be at fault, but poor control of the vocal system is another possible factor. In other words, even if you can hear the note, you still might not be able to produce it. Third might be an inability to imitate: you can hear the sound and you know what sound you want to produce, but you can't combine the two—just as a baseball player might see a pitch and know how to swing the bat, but still strike out. Fourth, it might be that awful singers have bad memory: between the time they hear a song and when they sing it back, they forget the notes.

Source: Tone Deafness and Bad Singing May Not Go Hand in Hand

Jugglers Change Their Brains in Seven Days

In The Problem of Time I discussed the speed at WyyMi might be effective. A big question is how much training and practice of coordination skills is required before your brain adapts. In the case of juggling, the answer appears to be within seven days.

After only 7 days, a motion specialised part of the occipital lobe known as V5 had increased in density. In both studies, the changes were maintained over the subsequent weeks of practice, but these areas returned to their pre-learning state after several weeks without juggling.

From: Juggling can change brain structure within 7 days

Banging the Drum

I was at the WOMAD festival over the weekend and had a great time listening to a huge a range of music and enjoying the sun. A lot of the time I was watching the artists I was thinking about the role rhythm and movement in mental development and the part learning an instrument plays in a child's life.

For people with educational problems, learning an instrument can be as over-demanding as learning anything else. The basic coordination and rhythm needed to learn an instrument is often too much and musical notation can be a nightmare. Such problems (and I'm speaking for personal experience) can make the child very resistant to lessons leading to ever escalating stress and a war of wills that completely destroys the development value of the lessons.

But not all children with education or development issues have this problem. Some, maybe because of the skill of their teacher or a natural empathy for a particular instrument, fall in love with music. These children will practice, study and work hard by choice because they enjoy playing the instrument. How much benefit this brings the child in academic success is hard to measure but it certain boosts confidence and that in itself is worthwhile.

Watching the various musicians I was working ways to use the Wii controller to mimic the playing action for that artist's instrument (and being WOMAD, there was a huge variety of different instruments). The forthcoming Wii Music will have some ideas I'm sure but its designers have a different objective to WyyMi because they simple want people to have fun. With Wyymi we want to users to learn various movements with a high degree of accuracy and also enjoy it.

One of the easiest instruments to mimic and the most direct way to learning about rhythm is by playing the drums. There are lots of different styles of drums and drumming. Western pop-band drummers have great coordination to use both feet and both hands independently. More traditional forms of drumming are simpler and often a group activity. Because the drums are bigger, the movements are more defined and the group aspect means a level of choreography is required. One particularly good example I saw of the weekend was the Japanese drummers GOCOO .

From the video you can get a taste of the amount of physical activity required coupled with whole body coordination. Shown is a fast paced track but in the live shows they also do slow numbers where the grace of drummer's movement is as much part of the experience as the noise of the drums.

WyyMi needs to capture the range of movements used in GOCOO's drumming and also the spirt and enjoyment that drumming can bring to its players. On top of that it needs to teach its users from very first principals to complex rhythmic patterns. Building this system is not going to be easy or quick but it will be worth it.

Wii Music, Wii Speak

Big announcements from Nintendo following on from the news of their Wii MotionPlus yesterday. Wii Music is a guitar hero type game played using the standard Wiimore and Nunchuck featuring 60 different instruments. It can be played by up to six people at once making a great party game. Interestingly, it is not taking the Guitar Hero route of using existing music. It seems that Wii Music will try and convert your random pressing of the buttons into some tolerable music.

Not demonstrated at E3 was a previously trailed feature where the user conducts an orchestra using the Wiimote. This may have been dropped from Wii Music or it may turn up in another game sometime. A feature that was demonstrated was playing the drums using the Wii Balance Board. Its not clear how this will work (I can't find a video clip of it) but apparently the game will come with drum lessons built in.

Wii Music looks like an interesting approach to music games that should appeal to those of us wanting to us the Wii for rhythm and cerebellum training. The move away from the 'you must play the right notes in the right order' mandate into a more freeform, jazz, find-your-own-way game might appeal to the dyslexic or autistic child who have problems following a sequence of instructions.

Wii Speak is an add-on for the Wii. It is a group microphone that can sit on top of your television and allows room-to-room communication with other networked Wii owners. Only the Animal Crossing: City Folk game will make use it at the moment but expect other titles soon. Whether we will see a singing game using I don't know.

Wii Music announcement and yesterday's Wii MotionPlus new are both good for the WyyMi project. They show and increase the range of motions and actions the Wii can capture. These can be uterlised to create a great training program. I hope to have serious time to devote to Wyymi in September. Until then I will be making notes and coming up with ideas.

Wii MotionPlus Announced

An interesting development. Nintendo have announced a new add-on called the Wii MotionPlus that plugs in to the bottom of the Wiimote to give movement tracking. Nintedo are promising near one-to-one movement so that any movement of the arm can be replicated on the screen. This has great potential for game play but for WyyMi it means that movements can be tracked better. With this Wyymi can provide training in a much larger range of movements with better feedback.

MTV have the details, such as they are, but here is the bulk of it:

Nintendo’s upcoming Wii MotionPlus accessory for the revolutionary Wii Remote controller again redefines game control, by more quickly and accurately reflecting motions in a 3-D space. The Wii MotionPlus accessory attaches to the end of the Wii Remote and, combined with the accelerometer and the sensor bar, allows for more comprehensive tracking of a player’s arm position and orientation, providing players with an unmatched level of precision and immersion. Every slight movement players make with their wrist or arm is rendered identically in real time on the screen, providing a true 1:1 response in their game play.

Source: First E3 Surprise - Nintendo Unveils ‘Motion Plus’ Wii Add-On