Thesis Project 05: Brainstorming!

It’s very exciting to conduct a one-person (myself) brainstorming jam to discover a couple of ideas.

Based on the personas, the design goal, and the experience principles I listed in the previous post, I have brainstormed a couple of ideas. In general, there are three ways to facilitate the holistic co-play experience to empower amateur musicians to make friends, have fun together, and get a sense of achievement through co-play within the musical instrument community:

1. Asynchronous Online Gig Platform

What is the co-play experience?

Inspired by TikTok imitation shows and the sing together function in modern karaoke apps, in the asynchronous online gig platform:

• Before playing a piece of sheet music, user can add the recording layers shared by other players in this sheet music who played it with other types of musical instruments.
• And then when user is playing, empowered by AI, they can hear the sound effect of all instrument layers so that they will feel they are in a gig co-playing with others instead of playing alone.
• After playing, they can share their recording layer and the layer they shared can be added to other user’s playing.
• The multiple musical instrument musical scores are composed by professional musicians, but also can be potentially composed by AI.

Technical Requirement: AI

• AI needs to have the ability to recognize where the user is playing in this sheet music so that it can automatically adjust the speed to match the process and resume if the user stops playing.
• Besides, as we need to offer various enough musical scores to users to meet their need for co-playing with different musical instrument players, applying AI as an instrument-type-flexible and level-flexible musical score transcriber is needed.

2. Synchronous (Live) Online Gig Platform

What is the co-play experience?

The true live online gig platform.

• Users can create a co-play group with their current friends or with new friends connecting from the community function, or join a co-play group from the community.
• The AI musical score transcriber will generate the musical score that matches each co-play group member’s instrument type and level.
• Group hosts can schedule a gig time and gig channel within the platform and share the link to invite their family and friends to join. The recording can also be shared within the platform community or on other external social media platforms.

Technical Requirement: AI + 5G

• As mentioned above, AI should be smart enough to generate the on-demand musical score to ensure the holistic co-play experience is simple and hassle-free.
• Without the scale of the next-generation high-speed internet connection, online live co-play would be frustrating, especially when two or more instruments are sounding together.

3. The Platform Facilitating Offline Gig Experience

What’s the co-play experience?

The platform that helps users find local amateur musicians, offers on-demand musical score transcriber service, and finds a casual public place for practicing and co-play together locally, e.g. outdoor places like in a park, on a square, or an indoor place like in the public music classrooms (include fees).

Technical Requirement: AI

• As mentioned above, the on-demand AI musical score transcriber.