Synthesiser Mind-Meld

Posted by Martin R on September 11, 2010
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Apples in Stereo mastermind Robert Schneider demonstrates his latest technical combo: a vintage 80s synthesizer hooked up to a recently released EEG game controller, which allows him to change the pitch of the synth’s output with his thoughts.

I particularly like the non-glitzy surroundings. The guy is sitting in shorts and t-shirt on a beat-up couch, unshaven and with his hair poking out in all directions, looking like a stoner and showing off his bizarre invention. It’s very far from the Kraftwerk esthetic, yet some of the tech is decades later than Kraftwerk’s.

Check out the latest Apples album, Travellers in Space and Time! I’m currently listening to it randomly interleaved with, among other things, Cathedral’s latest effort, which makes for a pretty interesting contrast.

Thanks to Moomin for the tip-off.

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Comments

  1. #1 PsyberDave
    September 11, 2010

    I’m not sure of the practicality yet of this business of connecting a synth to one’s brain, but I do love Kraftwerk. I can see them fiddling with this kind of technology at Kling Klang studios. But they would never release anything publicly unless they had mastered it and it sounded innovative.

  2. #2 Martin R
    September 11, 2010

    For the past two and a half decades it’s been pretty much “never release anything publicly, period”. )-:

  3. #3 Jonathan Jarrett
    September 11, 2010

    Fabulous! It’s basically reporting his alpha-wave activity, is it? If you got two people on it and had the other rigged to modulate the signal in some other dimension, you could genuinely start to build music. But how on earth does this thing function as a game controller?

  4. #4 Martin R
    September 12, 2010

    “…steer a ball through an obstacle course. The brain waves are captured with the enclosed EEG headset, which allows the user to speed up or slow down a fan, thus lifting or lowering the blue styrofoam ball.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindflex