'SoundChilde'- a music innovator & scientist par excellence

'I majorly work with the Brain Computer Interface. The idea behind it is to apply neurotech to facilitate communication between devices' 

Vasudha Zora | NT

Bengaluru: Many of us have come close to the thought of making music just by thinking about the tunes or at least dreamt about it, especially for the ones that did not play any instruments or are learning.

Call it curiosity or sheer opportunity for the future, Alex John is one such pioneer amongst the many with his share of failed and successful experiments in the Brain Computer Interface space. At a very tender age, Alex spent a vigorous amount of time with his father understanding the art of DIY building. He shares that while the other kids went out to play when he was in grade six, he would sit at home and juggle his mind around these experiments.

Deriving inspiration from Kraftwerk and many other electronica bands which were introduced to him by his father, his curious and scientific nature began applying different approaches. He has now designed a circuitry which transcribes brain signals into audio signals and the same can be done with the heart signals.

“When you are in college, you are always broke. I had to find time and money to get to work on my experiment and had to muster the time and energy to troubleshoot the problems that come with such complicated circuitry. Depending on the sensitivity of the issue, it could take hours, weeks or even months until I figure it out and fix it. My experiments started giving me results only by the year 2010,” said Alex, also known as SoundChilde.

He further said, "It got me thinking that I am building all these devices, and all this raw neutral data is coming out of my brain. So what would it be like to convert this into music and see what that sounds like? I majorly work with the Brain Computer Interface, the whole idea behind it is to be able to apply neurotech in order to facilitate communication between devices that were built on the computer. It took me a year and a half to figure out the sourcing and roadmap to building the software and programming, basically putting everything together to be able to generate music out of it. It's much easier now as they have music libraries that can enable generating audio and visuals in real-time. It is music for nerds. I am now working towards a direction that will help me generate music from my thoughts."

Alex has been reusing and remodelling various devices in order to make this dream project work. He has given two decades of experience and exploration into it and is one of the passionate ones that wish to redefine what is currently known as conventional music. He has designed three synthesizers through which he is able to create Alpha Brainwave Cyberpunk music alongside Cyberpunk, Darkwave and Synth Rock-based electronica music.