Adaptive Tempo Synthetic Instrument for Expressive Performance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing portable device-based musical instruments struggle to provide engaging and expressive musical experiences, as they often require strict adherence to a fixed tempo, limiting user expression and adaptability to their skill level, which can lead to decreased user interest and engagement over time.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a method that dynamically adjusts the target tempo based on the user's actual performance, using multi-touch sensitive displays to recalculate the tempo in real-time, allowing for expressive accelerations and decelerations while maintaining rhythmic consistency, and incorporating adaptive scoring to accommodate varying skill levels.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If a fixed tempo is enforced in portable device-based musical instruments, then rhythmic precision is improved, but user expression and adaptability deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies dynamics by making the tempo adaptive rather than fixed. The system continuously monitors user performance and dynamically adjusts the target tempo to match the user's actual playing speed, allowing the instrument to adapt to different skill levels and expressive intentions while maintaining rhythmic consistency through gradual adaptation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback by continuously monitoring the user's actual performance tempo and using this information to adjust the target tempo. The feedback loop compares the user's playing speed with the target tempo and modifies the presentation pace of visual cues accordingly, enabling the system to respond to user expression while maintaining rhythmic structure.
2Manufacturing precision
If strict adherence to fixed tempo is required, then score accuracy is improved, but user engagement and long-term interest deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies parameter changes by modifying the target tempo parameter based on user performance characteristics. The system changes the tempo parameter dynamically to accommodate users who play faster or slower than the original score tempo, allowing score accuracy to be maintained relative to the adapted tempo while improving user engagement through adaptability.
3Reliability
If the visual cues advance at a fixed pace, then score fidelity is improved, but adaptability to user skill level deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system makes the visual cue advancement pace dynamic by linking it to the adapted target tempo. As the target tempo changes based on user performance, the pace at which visual cues advance also changes, maintaining score fidelity relative to the adapted tempo while adapting to different user skill levels.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses feedback from user performance to adjust the visual cue advancement pace. By monitoring how quickly or slowly the user plays and adjusting the target tempo accordingly, the visual cues advance at a pace that maintains score fidelity while being adaptable to the user's skill level.
Data Source
AI summary
Notwithstanding practical limitations imposed by mobile device platforms and applications, truly captivating musical instruments may be synthesized in ways that allow musically expressive performances to be captured and rendered in real-time. In some cases, synthetic musical instruments can provide a game, grading or instructional mode in which one or more qualities of a user's performance are assessed relative to a musical score. By constantly adapting to such modes to actual performance characteristics and, in some cases, to the level of a given user musician's skill, user interactions with synthetic musical instruments can be made more engaging and may capture user interest and economic opportunities (e.g., for in-app purchase and/or social networking) over generally longer periods of time.