Heartbeat App Fights Pain with Music
Posted: March 16th, 2011 | Author: tim.soo | Filed under: All, Medicine | No Comments »So this little program is something I put together in NYC MusicHackDay that uses ties music to heart rate in an attempt to reduce stress / mental pain. For a more full explanation, check out Evolver.fm’s write-up.
Heart Beat
A program that utilizes the familiarity/popularity of songs, combined with the overall speed (bpm) of the song to gradually lower heart rate and stress. Made for those in chronic pain/stress.
About the hack
The program, written in Cycling 74′s Max, first retrieves a playlist of songs based on parameters (familiarity, hotttnesss, tempo, similar artists) entered by the user. Then, a built-in browser searches for the top youtube hit based on the current song in the playlist (a legal way to listen to full versions of songs) via Google search and plays that song. After the song finishes, the playlist continues forth.
Should the heart rate become faster during a song, the subsequent song will have a slower tempo until the heart rate reaches an acceptable range.
If the heart rate drops too low, Rick Astley sings “Never gonna give you up.”
What APIs, tools or kit did you use?
Max/MSP + Echonest API = HeartBeat
Blog/website
The patch will be made freely available once a stable standalone version is made. [from the wiki]
Current Status
Incomplete, unreleased. If there’s enough interested, I’ll revive the project.
