(dramatic music) - Hey, it's Andrew Huang, and I got Maylee Todd in the studio today. You use your brain to control musical things. - Abso-tootley, I do, yes. - Among so many other weird
and wonderful things that you do. But today we're gonna experiment with, I'm gonna try this headband out that reads my brainwaves, and then we'll use the
brainwaves to control synths and stuff and play music with our brains. - Yes, I'm stoked. So I'm gonna take this off my head. This is a Muse headband, actually made by a Canadian company called InteraXon. - Canada.
- Yeah Canada, whats up? And then we'll get these contacts to your skin. That's what we want in life. - If we find out there's nothing happening up here, it won't be the most surprising thing. (soft music) - So actually, if you look at the screen. - Hey. - There we go. We have five brainwaves altogether. So what's happening here is using the Muse headband to read your brainwaves. And then that information is going into my phone, into an app called Mind Monitor, which then is going into Ableton through a bunch of third party apps and through like Max for Live. Just raw information doesn't sound the best. So you have absolutely have to put it through a scale. Like the universe doesn't really know like Western music. So, be sure to put it into a scale, or it's gonna be
a lot of noise comming at you. - Are you turning each different brainwave into note information basically? - Absolutely, just assigning certain aspects of the headband to these ports here and then putting them into MIDI channels. And then each MIDI channel has its own scale. And then also running some of that information through the JU-06 here. Because sometimes it's fun to be like, shaka-da-ka-da-ka-da-ka-da-ka. - What's the vertical axis of this graph here? - First of all, I'm not a scientist. And also, please, I'm just an exentric artist. I guess we measure it by hertz. - I mean, more hertz is more oscillation. - Yeah, right? So like, shaka, raka, raka, shaka, shaka, shaka. Shakira Shakira Shakira - What is a brainwave? - I'm not a scientist, guys! So now let's try to relax. Let's try relaxation. I want you to close your eyes, breathe in through your nose, out of your mouth. Good, this is your beta. So this is focus sustained attention. And this is one's riding at the top now. So you're breathing in through your nose. And exhale out through your mouth. - It's funny, because like, I do feel like I'm relaxing myself, but I also have so much excitement about what we're doing. - Oh, the gamma spiked! (screaming) - Wow. - Now gamma is at the top. - Wow, that's cool. I'd love to solo one brainwave. Like whichever one you think would be easiest to control. Because I think it would be so funny if I were able to like make the note go higher and lower. - Ooh, yeah, that's fun. Do you want to try gamma? Because it's the most active and you're quite active. - What if I read a book? So this is my book. That was a self promotion joke. I feel like I need to read something super technical where I'm like really having to think about. - Let's do math. We have a like a-- - Let's do some math, yeah. - Here we go! - Let's do math time. - Five plus five. - Yeah. - Now add 20. Now add six. Now add 15. - Yeah. - Now add 74. Now add five. Add 12. Minus 75. Now add 30. Add 10. Now minus 75. Add six. - Add six. - Add 20. Now add 75. Minus 75. Plus seven. Plus five. - All right, definitely it there. (laughing) - I feel like we got to this like simmery place. - I did feel like the soundtrack to like a game show where people have to do math. - Do you need to call
someone to stress you out or something? And we'll see what happens. - Do you have taxes that you have to do? That are overdue or anything? - Yeah, how are we gonna stress me out? - Okay, okay, can you sit on the chair and have a relax? - Okay. - And then, I guess you
would like close your eyes and relax and you won't know where I'm coming from, okay? - Okay. And then I'll stress you out. And I can't tell you how. (somber music) Your car is here? Does that work? I think you anticipated that one, but something happened. - Do we wanna try connecting it to big synth over here? - Hell yeah. (modular synth music) - Hey, if you're a music producer, check out today's sponsor, Tracklib. It's an online record store for sampling with over 100,000 real songs from all decades and genres that you can use in your productions. It's easy to find loops and parts to sample because the interface has a built-in looper (jazz funk music) and beat player. (upbeat music) Tracklib samples have been used in hits by huge artists like Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and J. Cole. Tracklib also just launched Sounds, a huge royalty-free library of sounds that you can use in your productions, covering pretty much anything you might need. (distant voice) (drum fill) (electronic drums) (melodic humming) (robot sound effects) Sign up for a free trial with the link in the description and you'll get a hundred download credits, which is double the amount of the normal trial. Check it out. All right, we're trying to set up now for Maylee's MIDI outs to go to my modular. I'm gonna see if I can choose between a kick drum and a snare drum, see if that's funny. Right now, I'm taking four waves, mixing them together, just so that the more activity there is, the more it'll all combine, and it's all turning into one control voltage signal. So I feel like if we get the right range, they'll be active. (rapid synth drums) Okay, so this is just our kick drum sound. - Yeah, nice. - And that's a snare sound or clap sound. It's gonna always trigger at this rate, but I'm trying to use my mind to control which one it's gonna be. - Oh really? Okay, cool, yeah. - I don't know if it's gonna be possible. So if I relax enough with change. (snare drums) (kick drums) (laughing) - This is wild. - I mean, we could just connect it to just a straight up oscillator and see how that like wibbles around. What happens if we turn off the scale now? - Okay, yeah, let's get that going. - Would it just be like all over the place? - Probably, let's mute all these jammers and see what's good. It's gonna get wacky doodle. - Yeah, so it's just like sending the wave all around, but I don't know, use the different waves to modulate the other waves. - You look like you should be in hackers right now. Acid burn, you know what I'm saying? What's up, Angeline Jolie? - I think it's just like pinned really high now. - Yeah, right. - If I chill, will it come back down? (synth tone) (laughing) - Wow! - That's nuts, yep, that's nuts. And I'm like really excited. - Yeah, what's up? - High beyond the range of hearing, but I can bring it back down. (synth tone) Yeah. - Wow. - I could totally do it. For the purposes of like demonstrating this, it makes sense to use this really basic sound where it's like, yes, we can hear that the thing is happening. I think now we'll just try and patch something where like we just plug these waves into all kinds of different stuff. - Cool. - But yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's just waves, you know? - It's just waves. - So you can send them to whatever you want. (electronic music) Okay, we're starting to get weird. - Yeah. (electronic music) With a little mice, you're
eating little tinnies of cheeses. In the haystack. (mumbling) This is what the future looks like. - Delay, we'll control the delay obviously with our waves. - If you're gonna meditate, this is how you're gonna meditate. We're gonna listen to this. Have your tea. - This is the exact kind of stuff that people give modular a bad rap for and I'm not helping. - What are they talking about? This is gold. So the album for Relaxation is for purchase out on Friday. You're gonna go right to bed. If this was a music fest that had this type of music, what would the festival be called? - Swamp Bottom. - Swamp Bottom. - You guys go to Swamp Bottom later in the summer? There we go. - Whoa. - So to explain what I did. (high pitch ringing) There's that. (high pitch ringing) Oh see, I started trying to explain stuff and like focusing. Now it's like high pitched. So I'm gonna explain this to you in a relaxed manner. (high pitch ringing) So that that pitch goes down. (low pitch ringing) - So. - It's so stressful to try to... - Oh my God, okay. (loud ringing) (screaming) - All the different waves. They're controlling the pitch of this oscillator. I'm firing this like really fast trigger and it's controlling the probability that it will actually pass through to trigger the envelope. Like now it's not triggering it as much. And then it's also controlling the shape of that envelope. Like it might be like snappy, it might be long. And then it's going into the granular and reverb. Oh and the amount of distortion. Everything is being controlled by my brain. - Yeah, wild. - The oscillator's just making a. (unpleasant synths) (laughing) (screaming) Everything hurts. - My taxes. - Am I a good father? - And a padded cell right now talking to a bunch of pillows. - It works. - It works. - All right, thanks for coming to the studio today. - Thanks so much. (laughing)
