Music game ideas

| tags: ideas, enabling technology

Ideas for a music game for children who are blind.

  • How about picking the next note for a tune?
  • Or how about a program that allows you to hum a tune and then hear it played on an instrument you choose?
  • This might be an interesting extension to the BlueBird kind of system. You can put down a rhythm track and then add instruments playing different parts. This might be fun for lots of kids (and adults!).
  • A simpler game might ask for the child to sing the same note as the game played, or a third above it, etc.
  • I wonder if kids would enjoy learning some music theory in the right setting.
I think I see how to do a DDR-like game for kids who are blind! Check out BlindDDR

Which makes me think that a drum pad built from the DDR pad could be fun. You jump around on the pad to play drums.

WaoN might be useful for converting sound to midi

Pete says this Music Theory site might help with my ignorance.

A Computationally Efficient Multipitch Analysis Model might be useful.

Chord Progessions might be important. This page on Money Chords looks good too.

Maximum Likelihood Method for Estimating Rhythm and Tempo looks interesting and useful.

Efficient Pitch Detection Techniques for Interactive Music talks about methods for estimating pitch in real time.

Thomas Logan says: Hey GB I really like the DDR idea. I’m trying to think more about your multiplier idea based on which pads you hit. Maybe it could have something to do with memorizing what the actual sounds are used in the song? Maybe you always jump on a particular pad when a drum roll happens or a certain cymbal crash.

The idea could also work if you took simple melody lines (like Mary had a little lamb) Each note in the melody could be assigned to one of the pads. You could get points for just stepping to the right timing of the melody and then more points for actually stepping on the right notes that made up the melody. With eight pads you would be able to use any melody that was played in C Major Scale for example. With the melody line idea you could actually learn by hearing what note it was that you stepped on. So if you step on the right note it will be perfectly in harmony with the note being played by the machine. If you step on the wrong note you will hear discord. This might be a cool training mechanism to learn melodies. Then you might be able to give points for playing the 3rd or 5th relative to the root note of the melody.

David Mason says look for archive of loops, riffs, etc. And Peter Gabriel made a music game years ago that might be interesting.