Brain-Computer Music Interface for Music Expression

Abstract

Active music listening is a way of listening to music through active interactions. In this paper we present an expressive brain-computer interactive music system for active music listening, which allows listeners to manipulate expressive parameters in music performances using their emotional state, as detected by a brain-computer interface. The proposed system is divided in two parts: a real-time system able to detect listeners’ emotional state from their EEG data, and a real-time expressive music performance system capable of adapting the expressive parameters of music based on the detected listeners’ emotion. We comment on an application of our system as a music neurofeedback system to alleviate depression in elderly people.