- Create a new way to interact and experience music
- Realize tone matrix by AM laboratory in hardware (video)
- Make a cube that a user can manipulate to produce sounds periodically
- 3×3 cube with buttons on every side except for top and bottom
- Each side represents a different instrument
- If a button is pressed, then the corresponding pitch activates in the next period
- Expand the interface to include motion sensitivity and gestures
- User controlled rhythm and tempo through his or her motion speed
Competition
- Game-oriented music interaction (Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, Dance Central, etc.)
- Interactive music sequencer (Ball Beats)
- Virtual DJs like Zulu DJ or MixSense (not pictured)
Competitive Analysis
| Dance Central | Guitar Hero | Ball Beats | Zulu DJ | Muzik’s Cube | |
| Music | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| -Music Creation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| -Rhythm Control | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| -Music Interactivity | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| -Motion Sensibility | ✓ | ||||
| Interactivity | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| -Physical Controller | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| -Virtual Controller | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| -Immediate Feedback | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| -Multiple Users | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Usability | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| -Easy to Setup | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| -Easy to Use | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
Requirements
- Interaction
- Motion controlled tempo and rhythm
- Button based sound type control on cube
- LEDs lighting to display button preference in each period
- Audio
- User controlled periodic waves of music
- Sound output based off of cube state
- Smooth transitions between types of sound output
- Robustness
- Produces nice sounds regardless of motion or lack thereof
Risks
| Risk | Mitigation |
| Hardware | |
| Unable to Detect Buttons | Use simple buttons |
| Unable to Multiplex Button Inputs | Start on hardware early |
| No Kinect | Get a Kinect |
| Reading From Serial | Use an already working serial reader |
| Learning Curve of Arduino programming | Work through a few tutorials |
| Producing Serial Data from Arduino | Use Arduino’s built in Serial capabilities |
| Software | |
| Being able to use human motion to effectively set rhythm and tempo | Use motions/gestures to control another aspect of the music |
| Multiple users interfering with the ability to simulate rhythm | Support one user first and use the Kinect SDK |
| Generating good sounding music | Experiment and use pre-existing sound libraries |