Sheet music by mind: Towards a brain-computer interface for composing

Providing brain-computer interface (BCI) users engaging applications should be one of the main targets in BCI research. A painting application, a web browser and other applications can already be controlled via BCI. Another engaging application would be a music composer for self-expression. In this work, we describe Brain Composing: A BCI controlled music composing software. We tested and evaluated the implemented brain composing system with five volunteers. Using a tap water-based electrode biosignal amplifier further improved the usability of the system. Three participants reached accuracies above 77% and were able to copy-compose a given melody. Results of questionnaires support that our brain composing system is an attractive and easy way to compose music via a BCI.