When you go to a symphony, the music soars and creates a story without typically using words. We attend these events, not only for the enjoyment of hearing such amazing sounds, but to be a part of the experience as performers create a new world with just musical instruments.

Watching the musicians sway in time to what they are producing is part of the experience. But is it the only way to play and experience music? That’s the question one university and researchers are trying to answer ‒ what happens when you love to play music but have lost the ability to move? The answer they came to may surprise you.

Back in 2015, Plymouth University in London, England, conducted a musical performance unlike any other ever seen. The school’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research prepared their musicians ‒ not with instruments, but with computer-linked caps. Prof. Eduardo Miranda came up with the study to try and give people who were essentially trapped inside their bodies due to a neurological disorder, a chance to play music.

Prof. Eduardo Miranda came up with the study to try and give people with neurological disorders a chance to play music by using brain waves. Photo from Paramusical Ensemble

Miranda worked with the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability out of London. Together, they placed the caps, lined with electrodes that would read brain-wave patterns, on the heads of the four performers. These people all had some form of severe motor impairment, making them unable to move well or at all, and with limited speech abilities. 

The researchers and doctors believed they had a unique way to let these people play music. They wanted to remove the physical aspect of music, allowing the patients’ minds to take over what their hands could do.

During the performance a screen would show each of the four people musical phrases. Once the person would choose a phrase, simply by looking at it and thinking of their choice, the cap would send the pick received by the brainwaves to a musician who was able to physically play an instrument. Those people would then play the sounds the disabled musicians had chosen.

What came from this was nothing short of a miracle. The choice of each person blended together as the musicians played, creating a symphony of their very own. The video of their music quickly went viral. The motor-impaired musicians were thrilled with being able to create music. Their engaging performance was later shown in a documentary titled “Paramusical Ensemble.”

With the future of computer sciences expanding quickly, we can likely expect these performances to become more advanced and give even more freedom to people who before, likely wouldn’t have had a chance to engage in something they loved.

Check out the below video to see the heartfelt performance.

Sources: Upworthy | Buzzworthy