Episode 7: Feel The Music

Mick Ebeling:	00:06	Evelyn Glennie is so impressive. What's amazing is that she forged a career as a solo percussionist when basically no one had ever done that before. And she became world famous at it.

Mick Ebeling:	00:21	Glennie was awarded Grammys and other prizes, and even the title Dame Commander of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of England. She's performed all over the world.

Mick Ebeling:	00:35	But what's truly amazing? Evelyn Glennie is deaf.

Mick Ebeling:	00:44	I'm Mick Ebeling, and this is Not Impossible, a podcast dedicated to technology for the sake of humanity.

Mick Ebeling:	00:53	This podcast is brought to you by Avnet, a company dedicated to helping creators of all types find whatever they need to get from idea to product, and then get that product to market anywhere in the world.

Mick Ebeling:	01:05	Today, a story from Not Impossible Labs. We're an innovative space that brings together engineers, hackers, makers, dreamers, social entrepreneurs and artists, all dedicated to the idea of tackling the things that just can't be done, and then doing them anyway.

Mick Ebeling:	01:22	Our story today poses two simple questions. First, how do people who are deaf experience music? And then then, can we create something to enrich that experience? The answers kinda took us by surprise.

Mick Ebeling:	01:39	So to start, I want to tell you about a very special inspiration. Evelyn Glennie is one of my all time heroes. And one of the first things you'll come to understand about Evelyn is she's someone who relishes tackling the impossible.

Evelyn Glennie:	01:53	Well, I think a lot of it has to do with just the kind of people, I suppose, of the Northeast of Scotland. You know, they're hard workers, the terrain is hard.

Mick Ebeling:	02:05	Right.

Evelyn Glennie:	02:05	Being in the environment of the farming community, they work hard. Rain or shine, every single day of the year. You know, the independence and that kind of upbringing allowed you to think about creating your own opportunities, once I decided to become a musician, decided to become a solo percussionist, it meant that well, right, where are the examples, there are none so let's get on with it. Let's see how far we can go with this.

Mick Ebeling:	02:33	Evelyn Glennie has had a pretty uncommon passion for music ever since she was really young. She mastered concept after concept, performance after performance, and she started to listen to music differently. She started to literally hear differently.

Evelyn Glennie:	02:48	Well I had mumps when I was six years old, and really after that, just very gradually, I was noticing that my ears were beginning to be very sore when I went outside. And I also was finding that I was just not picking things up in group conversations. And then all of us at school used to have a hearing test where someone would come in, an audiologist, and she noticed something. And it was really because of her, whereby she said I think we do need to get you tested out properly. And so that's when I went into hospital. And then gradually I was fitted with hearing aids.

Mick Ebeling:	03:25	She hated them.

Evelyn Glennie:	03:26	Suddenly everything was heightened to an incredible degree. And suddenly the piano was no longer the piano. It was something that was just bombarding one part of my body.

Evelyn Glennie:	03:37	And then of course when I started percussion, when I went to secondary school, that was even worse. You know, this uncontrollable barrage, which then affected your balance as well.

Mick Ebeling:	03:49	Her percussion teacher stepped in to help.

Evelyn Glennie:	03:52	About the age of 12 he said well hold on a second. You know, just as we strike this timpani, there's a tremendous amount of resonance coming from that drum.

Evelyn Glennie:	04:04	And he said well where in the body are you actually feeling that sound? Not hearing it, but feeling it?

Evelyn Glennie:	04:11	And I sort of paid attention, and in a way I listened to the resonance, so the strike and then the resonance. And I said well I can feel it in this part of my hand, or wherever I felt it. And I put my hands on the wall. And so the vibration really came through the wall, through my hands and so on.

Mick Ebeling:	04:30	And then he played another pitch on the timpani, and she felt it in another part of her hand. And another, and another.

Evelyn Glennie:	04:39	And it went on and on like that. And it basically allowed me to thing that, well hold on a second, sound doesn't just always have to go through the ears.

Mick Ebeling:	04:46	So she took her hearing aids out.

Evelyn Glennie:	04:49	I was now in control. I could digest sound in the lower part of my body, or in the upper parts of of my body. I could really pay attention to the resonance. I had a lot more patience with sound. And it was no longer a case of well that's a bad sound or not a nice and oh I like that sound dependent on what you were hearing through the ears. But instead, mm-hmm (affirmative), you know, I love this combination of sounds, because of how it felt though the body.

Mick Ebeling:	05:17	I love that your brain and the way that you experience sound and music had evolved and had grown. Then when all of a sudden, society had given you these tools, these hearing aids that could return you back, oh so benevolently return you back to the way that we all hear, that your response was "Ah oh my god, this isn't that good."

Evelyn Glennie:	05:36	Absolutely right, and I'm a big believer in listening to the body first of all. In the percussion world, I'm still coming across sounds I've never, ever heard before in my entire life. So I have to really listen to the body in order to listen to the instrument and vice versa.

Mick Ebeling:	06:10	So what Evelyn is talking about is at the heart of something we were trying to do at Not Impossible, which is to create a device that would allow all deaf people to connect with and delight in and experience music, the same way that Evelyn does.

Mick Ebeling:	06:24	But to get there, we needed to know more. We needed to understand what music is like from different points of view. So for example, from deaf audience members at a concert.

Mick Ebeling:	06:34	So we went to talk to someone who works with those audiences all over the world.

Amber G.:	06:38	When I first started out as an interpreter in music, I would bring a huge bag of balloons.

Mick Ebeling:	06:43	Meet sign language interpreter Amber Galloway Gallego. She goes by Amber G.

Amber G.:	06:49	If you have the balloon, you can feel the vibrations. So deaf people would put it underneath their shirts, so they all looked pregnant. But that's how they were able to achieve the vibrations.

Mick Ebeling:	06:58	I love that. What's with all those pregnant people over there?

Amber G.:	07:02	Exactly. Men too? What's that?

Mick Ebeling:	07:03	Men are pregnant too? That's crazy.

Amber G.:	07:06	Yeah!

Mick Ebeling:	07:06	And Amber told us about other ways that deaf people experience concerts. And sometimes performances are arranged where the bass is turned way up, and then the speakers are angled towards the floor to enhance the vibrations.

Mick Ebeling:	07:18	But those kinds of performances, they're often not live, and as you imagine, they can be pretty intolerable for non-deaf audience members. So even though the listening experience can be heightened for the deaf audience members, a type of auditory segregation continues.

Mick Ebeling:	07:37	As an interpreter, Amber G. works in spaces where deaf and hearing audiences are together. She tries to level the playing field. And that means bringing the concert to life. And just for context, picture this woman talking, with a bright pink Mohawk and a gargantuan smile on her face.

Amber G.:	07:57	So, when that music comes through me, I'm not necessarily dancing like you would see me dancing at a club. Because I would be off the hook, I'm just saying!

Mick Ebeling:	08:08	Describe to the listeners what it means to interpret music. Because we've all seen interpreters in different places, and they're just moving their hands very fast, and we know that those hands represent a translation of the words that are being spoken. But, describe how you translate a song.

Amber G.:	08:26	When I'm up there, I have to make sure that most of all, my movements are very purposeful. So if there's reggae, I need to make sure it looks like reggae. So I'm going to have a reggae movement to me, just like how you would dance reggae. If it's salsa I'm going to do more hip movement. I'm going to watch how the actual artist is performing so that my movements are going to almost mimic the artist to where it looks like I'm not even there.

Mick Ebeling:	08:52	Amber has interpreted for Madonna, Little John, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snoop Dog, and Adele. She's stood in front of audiences of thousands of people. And the thing is that sign language interpreters often feel challenged because they can only really focus on one instrument or voice at a time. And the thing with Amber is that her dance moves help to fill in the overall feel of the song.

Amber G.:	09:14	I'm using my face and all of the different expressions that show density, that show depth. And how different sound are very thick, or if you have very high pitched sounds. My face changes per instrument. There were times when deaf people said music is a hearing thing. And I said no, music is a human thing. And it brings us together within humanity. And if we totally neglect that part of the world, I think we're doing a huge injustice for humanity.

Mick Ebeling:	09:48	"A huge injustice for humanity." That's exactly what it is. Longfellow said, "Music is the universal language of mankind." And I love that quote, but it used to bother me as well because I thought, wait, how can music be universal if not everyone can hear it?

Mick Ebeling:	10:08	So now we had Evelyn's lessons about feeling the music, and Amber's emphasis on the full range of all the instruments and for all people to be listening together. So it was time for us to get back into the lab at Not Impossible and figure out, what could we bring to the table? How could we develop a way for audiences, deaf and hearing, to listen together to all the different components of the song, the bass, the drum, the guitar, and the vocals, and at the same time listen with our full bodies? We'll tackle that question after the break.

Mick Ebeling:	10:46	You, yes you, are invited to the 2019 Not Impossible Awards. Join us on June 1st in Downtown Los Angeles to celebrate the inspiring work of people and companies who share in Not Impossible's mission of creating innovative technology to improve the wellbeing of others. For tickets and information, go to NotImpossible.com/awards.

Mick Ebeling:	11:12	This is a podcast dedicated to technology for the sake of humanity. But it's also about the people behind that technology. If that's you, Avnet can help, no matter what you build. Why? Because they are the first company ever to offer true end-to-end solutions for product development in house. That way creators in any corner of the world can take an idea from prototype all the way through mass production. Are you a startup, an established OEM? Do you need help designing your product or organizing your workflow, or getting stuff to market? Avnet's got your back. Your world is one that's always changing, and that's why Avnet is here to help you reach further.

Mick Ebeling:	11:53	And we want to give a special shout out to Avnet's engineering communities, Hackster and element14, who help creators vet and invent the technology of tomorrow.

Mick Ebeling:	12:04	Want to do more than just listen to this podcast? Maybe something like taking on the next Not Impossible Challenge? Go to podcastnotimpossible.com to find info for you and for anyone who wants to take their project one step further.

Mick Ebeling:	12:22	Back to our story. It was time to bring what we'd learned about how deaf people experience music back to Not Impossible Labs, to translate that into ... well, we weren't exactly sure what we were going to translate that into.

Mick Ebeling:	12:37	But little by little, we figured it out. After a few false starts, and at Not Impossible Labs we're pretty famous for our false starts, we hit on an idea. We started calling it Music Not Impossible.

Daniel Belquer:	12:52	It's a platform for delivering vibrations on a skin in a crafted and very precise way.

Mick Ebeling:	12:59	This is Daniel Belquer, the director of technology at Not Impossible Labs.

Daniel Belquer:	13:03	You put a vest on, and you put a set of wrist and ankle bands on, and that's it. Each wristband and each ankle, and four different regions of your torso, receive vibrations crafted by the system and being transmitted wirelessly.

Mick Ebeling:	13:23	Using something called vibrotactile transmission, we created something that you can wear that allows music to be felt, perceived, heard, all over your body. Daniel studied a chart that I love in order to figure this stuff out.

Daniel Belquer:	13:37	Basically we have a chart, and it's called-

Mick Ebeling:	13:40	My favorite word. The "Homunculous."

Daniel Belquer:	13:43	Homunculous, yeah. We have a draw of a very weird man, with the proportion of the body parts changed to match the feeling of touch. So you have huge lips, he has huge hands. He has a very small torso, and so on and so on.

Mick Ebeling:	14:01	So, the more sensitive that part of the body is, the more attuned it is to sensation, and then the bigger it is on the Homunculous.

Daniel Belquer:	14:08	This model gives us a lot of information of the neurological side.

Mick Ebeling:	14:13	One would think instantly that genitalia, well you should put all the sensors there, put all the vibrations there, that's going to be the most ...

Daniel Belquer:	14:19	No.

Mick Ebeling:	14:20	Reactive to the vibration. But that's not the case, is it?

Daniel Belquer:	14:23	No. Because this actually makes, not exact the sensation but the discriminatory points.

Mick Ebeling:	14:30	Ah yeah.

Daniel Belquer:	14:31	Yeah, the distance between the points you can feel. So in your wrist if an ant is walking by you can feel like, extremely narrow. But here in the chest, like two inches.

Mick Ebeling:	14:43	So by zeroing in on the parts of the body with the strongest discriminatory points, we developed this awesome platform.

Daniel Belquer:	14:51	After trying many, many techniques and approaches and actuators and blah blah blah, cutting off the technical stuff, what we are providing now I'm calling a Surround Body Experience.

Mick Ebeling:	15:04	A Surround Body Experience.

Daniel Belquer:	15:07	You have vibrations that start on your ankles and go up the bottom of your neck. And as the music goes up you feel the vibrations moving across your body, as a Surround Body Experience. So, we can move different intensities and rhythms across the body, giving a totally new experience that now relates very closely to music.

Mick Ebeling:	15:28	Your body becomes like an orchestra. The horns here, the strings there.

Daniel Belquer:	15:34	You can craft each individual spot on your body precisely. So you can have a strong vibration on your left wrist and a mild one on your right wrist. Usually we put the drum beats and the more percussive elements on the ankles, because it feels natural to people.

Daniel Belquer:	15:50	And an interesting thing to point is the deaf community came to me and said we would like to feel the drums on our wrists. And I was very intrigued by that. I said why? And they said we want to wave our wrists in the air with the music, with the crowd, and it's easier for us if we feel the beat on the wrist.

Mick Ebeling:	16:09	That all sounds great in theory. But I'm always a little nervous when we try these things out.

Mick Ebeling:	16:16	We invited some hearing friends and a few deaf friends into the backyard of our lab, and we suited them all up together.

Mick Ebeling:	16:23	All right, is everybody good?

Speaker 6:	16:26	Yeah.

Speaker 5:	16:26	So far everyone's got wrists and ankles going?

Mick Ebeling:	16:28	We gave everyone a preview of the instrument placements: keyboards in the middle of the back, bass at the spine.

Daniel Belquer:	16:34	The middle section of your back has the keyboards now.

Speaker 5:	16:38	(crowd talking)

Daniel Belquer:	16:37	Piano.

Speaker 7:	16:41	Yeah.

Speaker 5:	16:41	Got it guy, got it?

Daniel Belquer:	16:44	Your spine has the clavichord.

Speaker 8:	16:45	I don't feel it.

Speaker 5:	16:45	You got it, you got it?

Daniel Belquer:	16:54	Get ready for the full band to start playing. Ready?

Speaker 6:	16:56	So ready!

Daniel Belquer:	16:56	Okay. Three, two, one.

Mick Ebeling:	17:06	I was dying to know what our team of testers had to say. And what they had to say was music to my ears.

Kylie Herrera:	17:13	I'm Kylie Herrera.

Mick Ebeling:	17:15	Amber G. was there to help interpret.

Kylie Herrera:	17:18	I'm profoundly deaf. My expectations were that I was going to be able to feel the bass. So when I put it on, I couldn't believe it, because I could feel this instrument, and that instrument, and I could feel it in all different areas of my body. And then I also felt so connected to the hearing people around as well. I understand it for the first time, because I understand that that's what they're hearing with all the different instruments at the same time.

Josh Castille:	17:43	Hello, my name is Josh Castille. I'm wearing a vest that's made of like, a denim jacket kind of. I guess I should go back. It's as if, without me hearing, it's like looking at a canvas of art, and colors are all kind of like, blurry. So you can't really see anything. Then with my hearing aids I can see the colors, I just don't know what they're making.

Josh Castille:	18:05	With this vest I add the outline and I actually see it as a forest filled with trees and there's a pond with ducks. This vibration helped me define the music in a way that helps me to understand what's happening.

Jules Dameron:	18:21	I'm Jules Dameron. My family is full of musicians. Deaf people typically have to always rely on an interpreter, and look through everything with my eyes. I have to be in a specific area.

Jules Dameron:	18:33	But with this gear, Music Not Impossible, I was able to look all around. I could talk with my friends. I could still feel the music and be involved. I even went to the restroom and I could feel the music still! I really, truly believe in empowerment, and I finally felt empowered and independent.

Jules Dameron:	18:53	Sometimes we have our challenges and our barriers. But this broke all of those down.

Mick Ebeling:	19:02	Breaking down barriers is just what we set out to do. To allow deaf and hearing audiences to love music together side by side. It was great; we had achieved our goals. But like all great goals, thanks to our collaborators and testers, we realized we hadn't aimed high enough.

Mandy Harvey:	19:20	(singing)

Mick Ebeling:	19:30	Mandy Harvey is a professional singer who became deaf when she was only 18. She didn't let that stop her performing, but it's been different.

Mandy Harvey:	19:39	I don't perform for myself anymore. I don't understand, I don't feel. So I perform all of these songs, but I don't get the enjoyment. So I perform for other people.

Mick Ebeling:	19:53	We invited Mandy to put on the full Music Not Impossible gear: the wristbands, the ankle bands, and the vest, to connect to her own voice in whole new way.

Mandy Harvey:	20:09	(singing) Oh that's weird! (singing) I even feel myself laughing! (singing)

Mick Ebeling:	20:28	She told us that as a performer, she felt that Music Not Impossible had the potential to give her freedom on stage, to feel where the music was coming from and which instrument was playing, without constantly having to look around.

Mandy Harvey:	20:40	When you're playing jazz a lot you have the different instruments. They are playing. They add solos. So you have to like, look around the whole time, constant. But you don't get to relax. Just always work, work, work, work, work. So if I could feel, here piano, piano solo. And then all the other instruments back off, so you can tell it's a specific solo. And then you can feel it switch, all right saxophone.

Mick Ebeling:	21:13	Remember, we had placed the vibrations of each instrument in a different part of the body: the piano in the ankles, the bass guitar in the base of the spine, that kind of thing. But then, as Daniel and Mandy and I sat in the backyard and talked, she gave us a new way to think about Music Not Impossible.

Mick Ebeling:	21:28	Mandy asked us, what if, let's say, the same way a sax solo moves up and down the scale, what if we were able to have that feeling move up and down your body as well?

Mandy Harvey:	21:39	You can tell if the note's going up or down?

Daniel Belquer:	21:42	Yeah, yeah. We can create that, yeah.

Mandy Harvey:	21:43	That would be cool.

Mick Ebeling:	21:45	We figured out how to incorporate that idea into Music Not Impossible, so now it can do that too.

Mick Ebeling:	21:52	But let's be clear: are we the first people to ever figure out how to use vibration to express sounds? No, far from it. There's other companies out there that let you immerse yourself in the feeling of music and games, or all those vibrational gaming chairs. Heck, go all the way back to Sensurround in the '70s, the vibratory experience in movies like Earthquake and Midway. It's never about being the first to think of a new technology. It's about finding ways to make that technology act in the service of humanity. That's what we set out to do. That's what we always set out to do at Not Impossible.

Mick Ebeling:	22:30	So in the end, did we allow deaf people to hear music? Of course not. That was never the point. What we did was learn for ourselves that our own way of experiencing music, the thing we call hearing music, is just one way to experience it.

Mick Ebeling:	22:48	And when we stepped out beyond our own way of doing things, interpreting things, and experiencing the world from our own point of view, when we let go of that, we suddenly found that goals we thought were unattainable had become not impossible.

Mick Ebeling:	23:14	So that's our show for today. Thanks for listening. Thanks again to our sponsor, Avnet, a company that provides true end-to-end technology solutions to help people who make, well, anything, anywhere in the world, reach further.

Mick Ebeling:	23:29	And I was to invite you to go check out their communities, Hackster, the world's fastest growing developer community, for learning, programming, and building hardware; and element14, the biggest designer-engineer community on the planet. You can find links to their websites on ours, podcastnotimpossible.com.

Mick Ebeling:	23:50	The incredible Jocelyn Frank was our senior producer for this episode. Our associate producer is the wonderful Vicki Schairer. Thanks also to George Lavender and Timber, Orange Free Sounds, Lucky Little Raven, and Inspector J.

Mick Ebeling:	24:05	Our director of partnerships, Joe Babarsky. And our Development director is Erin Sullivan.

Mick Ebeling:	24:12	And our executive producers are Phil Lerman and me. I'm Mick Ebeling.

Mick Ebeling:	24:16	Until next time remember, some things that you think can't be done, just can't be done yet. Despite all appearances, they're not impossible.