This paper proposes a novel EMG-controlled music interface for people with severe physical disabilities. In this system, EMG signals are measured using some electrodes attached to the skin surface, and three parameters, which are timing information, duration of muscle activation level, and time derivative of muscle activation level, are extracted from the measured EMG signals. By using the abovementioned three parameters, tempo, nuance, and volume of prepared music score data, respectively, are controlled. In order to verify that people with severe physical disabilities can play music using this system, an experiment is conducted on patients with cervical spine injuries by using EMG signals measured from two pairs of electrodes attached to the patients' faces. Experimental results show that the patients can play music by three discriminated motions and also voluntarily play music like a conductor, on the basis of the allocated tempo, nuance, and volume. The possibility of the system controlling music information such as tempo is also verified through comparison experiments using a MIDI keyboard. In addition, we confirm that there is no statistical difference between the proposed system and a MIDI keyboard, and this system enables the patients to play music reflecting how they want to perform.

This paper proposes an EMG-based music score input system for people with severe physical disabilities. The system discriminates EMG patterns measured from a user through a probabilistic neural network. The user can input music scores by selecting on operation commands using EMG signals displayed on a monitor. In this system, muscle activation levels and intervals between muscle contractions are allocated to control a cursor velocity and a musical note, respectively, thereby enabling efficient input of music scores. Muscle activation levels are also used to control sound volume for the input of espressivo music. Operation experiments involving a patient with cervical spine injury showed that the subject could control the system and input music using EMG signals measured from two pair of electrodes attached to the face. The system's suitability for the input of music score data was also validated by monitoring operation time intervals, the number of mistakes in operation and so on. The results indicated that the user could work with the system and freely input music score data.