Watch Andrew Huang and Maylee Todd control synths using their brainwaves alone
It’s all made possible with the Muse headband made by the the Canadian company InterAxum.
Andrew Huang and Maylee Todd. Credit: andrewismusic/Instagram
For most of his career, YouTuber Andrew Huang has made music in unconventional ways – water, balloons and dental equipment, for example. He once even played Bach’s Air On The G -String with… an actual G-string.
Now, he’s outdone himself by making music entirely with his brain. More specifically, he and artist Maylee Todd teamed up in their latest videos to explain how you can control synths with your brainwaves.
Huang tries on a Muse headband, made by the Canadian company InterAxum, that reads his brainwaves and uses them to control synths. His brainwaves then become visible on a screen. The information goes into Todd’s phone through an app called MindMonitor which is connected to Ableton through a series of third party apps.
They attempt to change the sound the synth is producing by getting Huang to relax, which has an influence on the beta waves his brain is producing. Naturally, however, relaxing proves a little tricky when he’s getting excited about making sounds with his brainwaves.
He’s then able to produce different sounds when asked to do some simple maths, “It did feel like the soundtrack to a game show where people have to do math,” Huang jokes. Todd then attempts to change the sound again by stressing him out, but this is a bit less successful.
Later on, they connect the device to Huang’s modular synth and finds that when he relaxes, the sound changes. He later works out when he can control what he’s thinking or feeling, it alters the sound.
Check out their experiments below:
