I recently heard an audio version of an EEG of a person listening to 'Smoke On The Water'. It sounded very much like a muffled version of 'Smoke On The Water' itself.
Now, we're going to need to do one little leap of faith here which i can't really justify, which is this: if you imagine a piece of music vividly enough, say if you're actually a professional musician, somewhere in your brain there will be electrical activity which corresponds to the music and can be converted to the relevant sound. Happy with that? Maybe not - i'm not, after all.
Right, so you then get your drummer, bass player, keyboardist, vocalist or whoever, and you wire them up to EEGs, perhaps using electrodes inserted directly into the auditory centres of the brain. You send that information to a computer and a PA system. Then, you give them ear protectors and you get them to imagine, possibly with the help of mind-altering chemicals, that they are playing their instruments or singing. If you can't do it that way, maybe you monitor the electrical activity of their larynx or arm and hand muscles. You then convert it into sound. The musicians sit there, imagining that they're playing their instruments, and a concert ensues.
See [AutoMcDonough]'s anno for the name change.-- nineteenthly, Mar 10 2010 Cardiac rhythms synchronize with music http://www.theheart.org/article/982997.do [Klaatu, Mar 12 2010] It might help if you fed them a metronome tick, so they didn't have to concentrate on the tempo. [+]-- gisho, Mar 10 2010 Hmm, i did isolate them auditorily because i wondered if they'd all have seizures if they heard their own brains, but clearly a metronome would be a good solution to that.-- nineteenthly, Mar 10 2010 This was done in (I think) Neuromancer, cyberpunk books.-- zeno, Mar 10 2010 This could be the beginning of something big if we're not careful.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 10 2010 you'd need more contact points, thus more EEG device thin wire filaments connected to the scalp, thus... hair guitar.-- FlyingToaster, Mar 10 2010 [nineteenthly] For this, I think you don't want auditory centers -- you want mirror neuron regions. And forget EEG -- you want magnetoencephalography. Apart from being necessary (I think), it's also much cooler than EEG (*much* cooler -- liquid helium, in fact).
If you could convince a record company to produce this, you'd have a way to pay for a center with multiple MEG machines all in one place. Then, after the musicians got bored with it, the neuroscientists would get to play with them!-- mouseposture, Mar 10 2010 " recently heard an audio version of an EEG of a person ". [nineteenthly], any way you could share that recording with us?-- normzone, Mar 10 2010 I wonder what the EEG would sound like if one person was doing jumping jacks, another was reading, and a third was getting spanked.-- AutoMcDonough, Mar 11 2010 OK, [mouseposture], i'll look into that. I'm vaguely aware of what you're talking about.
[Normzone], it was on Radio Four but i can't remember exactly what. I'll go and have a poke around. It was a bit odd because it sounded quite like that simulation of what 'Smoke On The Water' would sound like on Titan.
[AutoMcDonough], come to think of it that sort of thing could be a more arty version and i might even prefer it to my original idea.-- nineteenthly, Mar 11 2010 It would be cool if the audience could also link in their thoughts and add to the background droning. I see this applied to metal and / or techno.-- Riki, Mar 12 2010 Yes, but i'm ambivalent about the idea of experiencing the music and producing it simultaneously. I think it would risk seizures, but going along with an emo/goth way of looking at it, maybe seizures would actually be seen as desirable by certain fans.-- nineteenthly, Mar 12 2010 I automatically love anything that can justify the name "Hair Guitar"-- AutoMcDonough, Mar 12 2010 Right, i'll change the name.-- nineteenthly, Mar 12 2010 How much did you pay for the assertiveness training classes, [nineteenthly] ? Or did you just give them whatever they asked for ?
You are SO easy to influence...-- 8th of 7, Mar 12 2010 <snicker>-- FlyingToaster, Mar 12 2010 random, halfbakery