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Paralyzed musicians create beautiful sounds once again—using nothing but their brainwaves

The talent is still in their minds.

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A string quartet that needs no instruments

Imagine seeing a string quartet play beautiful music.

Strings are pretty much my favorite kind of instrument; it's hard for me to listen to a cello or violin and not feel something. And when you get four musicians all playing together? Beautiful.

In 2015, Plymouth University's Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research and the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in London teamed up to create a spectacular string quartet.

But this wasn't your typical performance.

The musicians in this quartet all had severe motor impairments, which can affect a person's ability to move.

Motor impairments can be caused by a number of different things, such as a motor neuron disease like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease). In severe cases, a person may not be able to move or speak at all.

For musicians like these folks, their condition would normally present a considerable barrier to being able to play music like they once did. But in this case, researchers and doctors found a way to let them play anyway.

The thought was this: If the musicians still have musical talent but simply can't do the physical motions, we'll just make it so they don't need to do any physical motions.

science, music, research, real-time

Researchers place device on the head of musician.

Image pulled from YouTube video

First, researchers put stretchy, cap-like devices that can read brainwaves on the musician's heads.

Then, during the performance, a computer screen presented the four musicians with selections of short different musical phrases.

The musicians could choose what phrase they wanted by simply looking at it. The caps then picked up these brainwaves and sent the information to four other, nearby musicians who played the music for them (so, technically, maybe this would be an octet).

The end result was brilliant — four motor-impaired musicians, picking and playing in real-time to create beautiful music, all with their brainwaves.

One of their performances was captured in this short, nine-minute documentary by Tim Grabham and professor Eduardo Reck Miranda, who spearheaded the project.

Check out their brilliant performance here:

Brain-computer interfaces have gotten us this far and are taking us further still.

We've already seen brain-computer interfaces that can help us control prosthetic arms with thoughts and restore senses of hearing and touch to folks without them.

There's a lot more work to be done in these fields, of course, but one day soon, we might be hearing, seeing, and visiting a lot more performances and projects like this.

This article originally appeared on 10.25.16

science
Family

Alanis Morissette tries to debut her new song but her daughter keeps adorably interrupting

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon/YouTube

Those of us who grew up in the Alanis Morissette angst era and followed her through her transformation into a more enlightened version of herself may be thrilled to know she has a new album out. Such Pretty Forks in the Road is her first album in eight years—and the first since two of her three children were born.

Anyone who's been working from home with kids knows that we're all in the same frequently interrupted boat. Such is the pandemic life. But we've also seen how those very human moments when kids insert themselves into life are some of the most real and precious. And that reality comes shining through in Morissette's Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon performance of her new song, "Ablaze," which is, not so ironically, a song about her children. As she sings, it's clear that she's still got the chops that made her famous. It's also clear that her 4-year-old daughter, Onyx, just sees her mommy as mommy and not as the iconic pop star that she is. The performance is lovely and sweet, and hearing Onyx's little voice and seeing her put her hand over her mom's mouth as she sings is just too adorably real.

Enjoy:

Alanis Morissette: Ablaze (TV Debut)www.youtube.com

As one commenter on Reddit wrote, "Keeping in tune with a baby on your hand while she's talking to you can't be easy. She nailed it." Indeed, she did. Welcome back, Alanis. Thanks for releasing an album right when we need it the most.

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Marvel just hired its first female film composer. Here's why that's a big deal.

My daughter and I watched a documentary about film composers and were stunned by how few women were in it.

Like, seriously stunned.

Of the many composers featured in the film "Score," only two were women. But I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised. If I were to list famous film scorers, I'd offer up names like John Williams, James Horner, Hans Zimmer, and Howard Shore. I don't even know the name of a female film composer off the top of my head.

John Williams received a lifetime achievement award for his film composition work in 2016. Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.

That's not good news for my daughter, who wants to be a film composer. She'll be studying music composition at university this fall, and while I have no doubt she'll rock it, it's disheartening to find out how male-dominated her chosen field is.

But perhaps change is on the horizon.

Marvel just made superhero movie history by hiring a female film composer.

As a bright spot in the darkness, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has brought on Pinar Toprak to score the much-anticipated "Captain Marvel" film. Toprak, who helped score the popular video game "Fortnite," will be the first female film scorer in a comic superhero movie.

To give you a sense of why this is significant, take a look at this list of DC superhero films and this list of Marvel superhero films. Just scroll through to see the sheer number of films — presumably all of which have included a score of some sort.

It's not that women don't ever score movies. They do — but only 3% of the top 250 films of 2017 included female composers (up from 1-2% a few years before). The industry has long been dominated by men and has been slow to change.

It's not just film scores. The whole music composition world is heavily skewed toward male composers.

In some ways, it's understandable. The most well-known classical music pieces come from the likes of Mozart, Bach, Schubert, Brahms, Vivaldi, and other male composers from generations past. The problem is that as the landscape has changed for women in music, the music that gets played and celebrated hasn't.

The statistics from Drama Musica and the Donne — Women in Music project show that among 1,445 classical concerts performed around the world in a year, only 76 included at least one piece by a woman. That means 95% of classical concerts only include male composers.

[rebelmouse-image 19346633 dam="1" original_size="500x445" caption="Image via Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, used with permission." expand=1]Image via Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, used with permission.

The numbers are not just due to the predominance of famous dead men in the classical music repertoire. In a survey of the 22 largest American orchestras during the 2014-15 symphony season, women only accounted for 14.3% of living composers whose work was performed.

"These numbers are both abysmal and embarrassing, particularly in this day and age," said Kristin Kuster, composer and associate professor of composition at the University of Michigan.

When an industry has been male-dominated for centuries, it takes a concerted, purposeful effort to level the field.

And there are some in the music world — like Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic Music director/conductor Ulysses James — leading the way.

After reading an article about the gender disparities for composers in orchestra performances, James responded with this:

"Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic Association Board members and I saw this article and decided to do something about it. Fourteen of the sixteen works we will be performing in the 2018-19 season will be composed by women. I'll also commit to programming 50% of the following season and beyond to women composers. Thank you for the article."

That's how it's done. It takes a conscious effort to turn the tide, and even just one decision like James' can break a pattern.

Thank you James and others making the effort and giving my daughter hope for a successful career doing what she loves. Let's hope more will follow your lead.

Heroes

He plays music to roaring crowds, but his best shows are for a much different audience.

Freddie Fuller is a country and folk music singer-songwriter who has entertained audiences at venues in and around Austin, Texas. He has recorded two albums, created a one-man show on the history of the Texas cowboy, and even performed for troops overseas. But some of the most profound performances of his life have also been some of the smallest, quietest shows.

Freddie performs personalized, acoustic concerts for people who are dying.

For the last four years, Freddie has worked with a small nonprofit called Swan Songs to bring the gift of music to people facing terminal diagnoses. Freddie and other Swan Songs musicians have played over 500 intimate concerts as a celebration of life for people nearing death, as well as their loved ones.

Why music? The answer is simple for Freddie: "Music is one of the few things that we as humans will allow to touch us in the deepest spots in our hearts."

In the United States, death is usually something that stays out of sight, out of mind.

Our conversations about the end of life are steeped in euphemism, and the actual process of dying seems to happen behind a veil — usually in a hospital or nursing home facility, rarely at home.

But treating death as taboo isn’t a recipe for having a "good death." Informed, nuanced conversations about the end of life can be helpful for both demystifying death and helping families navigate their grief. And a growing chorus led by health care professionals and social workers is calling for change in how we deal with death.

Swan Songs and its musicians are quite literally part of that chorus.

Since 2005, the nonprofit has fielded requests from the loved ones and caretakers of people with terminal illnesses and cultivated a community of local musicians who can help fulfill the recipient’s musical wishes.

When Freddie joined Swan Songs, he had already had the unique experience of playing music for his mother, who had cancer, as she approached the end of her life.

"I remember getting in bed with her in her hospital bed with a guitar, and I started singing to her," Freddie said. Years later, before his father passed away, he did the same thing — this time, with his five children in the room to share the experience.

The sense of hearing, Freddie noted, is usually the last sense to deteriorate at the end of life. So even if the recipient of his performance seems unable to respond or connect, they may still be hearing the music.

A recent Swan Songs experience reaffirmed Freddie’s believe that music has connecting power.

Another Swan Songs musician, Pam, had asked Freddie to perform a particularly special concert — one for her own dying father. When Freddie arrived at the hospital, about an hour outside of Austin, he found that Pam’s father was comatose and close to death. He gathered at his bedside with Pam and her sister and began to play.

"I played for 45 minutes or so," he says. "I played the last song, sang the last note, and hit the last guitar chord, and he took his last breath. We sat there very reverently and drank up the power of that moment."

That moment spoke to the essence of Swan Songs, Freddie says. Surrounded by music and love, his recipient passed on.

Freddie put his guitar back in his case and stepped into another role: that of a comforter and a friend. It was a short, soothing moment in time during a life landmark that is often cloaked in fear and despair.

That’s what Swan Songs is all about: bringing joy, connection, and peace to death, one of the most human experiences of all.

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