Baton Buddy
Using motion data to identify tempo and time signature
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ABOUT
Motion can be simply classified through accelerometer data and data analysis. There are many useful applications for identifying particular motions.
Music conductors use very distinct motions to guide musicians to a certain rhythm. They move their hands in different speeds for different tempos and in different movement distances for different volumes. Most importantly, there are unique patterns of hand motions for each time signature.
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Baton buddy is an app for people interested in learning and improving their conducting skills with no hardware other than a smartphone. Our program will analyze the motion data measured by your smartphone, and calculate the time signature and tempo at which the user was conducting. This clear, rapid, and explicit feedback allows users to adjust their conducting techniques to perfection. Our product currently detects common time signatures, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, and 6/8, but it would be very easy to implement others in the future.
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WE ARE FOR YOU
Are you curious about learning how to conduct like a master?
Learning how to conduct can be tricky. There is a lot that goes into getting the hand coordination just right. Baton Buddy makes checking yourself easier than ever. You will get to know if you are conducting in the correct time signature and at your desired tempo. Ditch the expensive music teachers and learn for free on the comfort of an app!
HOW IT WORKS
HOW IT WORKS
It's simple.
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In the Baton Buddy app, enter your chosen time signature and tempo. Hold your phone in your conducting hand and hit start when you are ready to begin!
FUTURE WORK
The current state of this project is that a conductor has to use the MATLAB App and use our MATLAB script. Running the script will give them the beats per minute and the time signature they are conducting in, as long as the time signature is in 1/4, 3/4, 4/4, or 6/8.
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There are some limitations to our product currently. For one, the user would have to have MATLAB in order to use our product, and MATLAB is not something everyone has access to. Additionally, it is not a very fast process to have to use the MATLAB app and export the data. So, we would want to make this into one cohesive app that will allow the user to take their measurements and read their results, all in a short period of time.
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We would not need any more sensors for our current model to work better. Knowing the accelerations in the x and z components give us enough data to clearly be able to identify a wide range of time signatures and tempos.
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In order to confirm that our model works for everyone, we would want to take more data samples of a wider range of levels of experience. In addition, having people conduct in different styles would be good to analyze to see if there are major data changes that would make time signatures less identifiable. For example, some conductors have more emphasis on beats or some conductors will change their stroke sizes with the volume of the music. These are all variables that will be important to consider. If we do find significant changes, we may want to revisit the acceleration charts and look for some more patterns that stay consistent. For example, there is a whole other axis of motion, the y-direction, that is not being analyzed that may have some interesting information that we have not noticed yet.