UK Inventor creates Brain Box to help paralyzed make music

Technology and music both will never cease to amaze us. We recently learned how one Brazilian born musician/inventor now living in the UK is helping people who are paralyzed create music using their brains. Eduardo Miranda has been on a mission for the last 11 years, ever since his eyes met someone who had "locked-in syndrome". This is a condition in which a patient is aware but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body except for the eyes. Mr. Miranda's latest invention is dubbed the "Brain Box", and with it he has found a way for these patients to create music just using their eyes.

This amazing device monitors brain activity through electrodes attached to the back of the head, and can determine where the persons eyes are looking. The person is then able to select which piece of music he wishes to hear by which icon on the screen he or she is looking at.

Miranda, who is head of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research at Plymouth University says:

"I wanted to create something to enable people with severe disabilities to make music. I was struck by an encounter I had once with a man who had had a stroke and was paralyzed completely from the neck down"

To me this technology is quite fascinating. and I can see so many uses for it even beyond playing music. I'm very interested to see just how far this can go someday. In the future, could we all have the computer record and play back music that we hear only in our heads?

To learn more about Eduardo Miranda and his work you can visit him at http://neuromusic.soc.plymouth.ac.uk/. To see where we first learned about this you can visit the KSPR news article here: KSPR.com - Brain-Box-Allows-Paralyzed-to-Make-Music

Mr. Miranda and his associates are also very involved in researching and developing software that can help create music. This video clip above explains a little about it and shows an orchestra playing a piece called "Mind Pieces" which was partially computer-inspired by birds and other natural occurring sounds that the "music creating"program

Well we made it past Christmas and I hope you had a wonderful time with your friends and family. New Years is right around the corner, stay tuned for another post for we hit the big 2015

Peace, Love & Happiness,

Vincent James @ LoveSongs.com

Precious Memories - 4 Golden Couples share their song and story

This morning I happened upon a beautifully touching video created by CDZA Music, a company that creates musical video experiments. CDZA actually stands for Collective Cadenza and was formed in New York City in 2012 and features over 150 talented musicians who together create and launch a new YouTube music video every other week.

The first video that brought them to my attention featured 4 Golden Couples and having them dance to their wedding songs from long ago (in most cases long ago, please read on). 3 of the couples have been married/together for over 50 years including Mike and Frances who were married in 1942 and first danced to "I'm Glad There Was You" by Jimmy Dorsey and Paul Mertz and first published in 1941. Another couple celebrating are in their 80's and both widowed - they were looking for someone to share the rest of their golden years together and found each other on Jdate.com . One very special couple had been together for 57 years but were only able to be officially married recently when the Gay marriage bans began to be overturned. I absolutely urge you to listen and watch these 4 couples as they dance to their special song and talk about how they met and what there lives were like together. I honestly got chills several times while watching as there stories and songs really touched me.

I have a feeling we'll be talking a lot more about CDZA Music in the future. I've only begun to scratch the surface for all the fun, entertaining and touching musical videos they have created. Some of the titles that have caught my eye include "Fresh Prince: Google Translation", "History of Wooing Men (and Woman)", "The Human Jukebox" and "History of Misheard Lyrics" - Many of these videos have already received 2-3 million views so there is definitely something happening here at the CDZA YouTube Channel

I hope everyone in the USA had a safe, fun and entertaining 4th of July - for our British friends across the pond we're hoping that after almost two and a half centuries there are no hard feelings :)

Music, Love & Laughter,

~Vincent James @ LoveSongs.com

p.s. KEEP MUSIC ALIVE Day #5 – Visit our first post from Tuesday July 1st for more information about our mission