Album Notes

Pieces of Mind is a collection of sonifications of brain data. A human subject is asked to draw shapes with a joystick while the electro-magnetic fluctuations emanating from his/her cerebral cortex are digitally recorded at the rate of 1000 samples-per-second using magnetoencephalography (MEG). The samples are later converted to MIDI sequences, slowed by a factor of ~150 and finally played by electronic music synthesizers.

Although every note on this CD came directly from brain activity, the choice of musical key, scale, inversion, tempo, dynamics, \'groove\' and instrumental ensemble for each piece is wholly mine. And I confess to adding percussion to the first track. The tunes\' styles run from Middle Eastern to bluegrass, from Debussy to Stravinsky, from Keith Jarrett to Joe Satriani.

I hope you like it!

Roger Dumas

Pieces of Mind would not have been possible without the inspiration and generous support of Dr. Apostolos Georgopoulos of the Brain Sciences Center in Minneapolis.