In the next few chapters, we will examine some larger projects covering a number of topics in music education. In this chapter, we will look at a research instrument designed to measure the time when a participant responds to some stimuli while watching videos. 1. Open the file STI.maxpat from the Chapter 18 Examples folder This patch allows a researcher to show participants one or more video files and ask them to press the space bar in response to whatever the researcher wants to observe. For example, the researcher might show a video of an orchestra performing Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and ask participants to press the space bar whenever they experienced “thrills” or “chills.” The program would then record the exact times, with respect to the video, that each participant experienced such a reaction. The researcher could then compare the times from that participant’s session to the times from another participant’s session. Let’s walk through the process together, though, unfortunately, instead of seeing an orchestra, you’ll have to endure a homemade movie from my trip to Colorado (it’s short—don’t worry). While you are watching the video, pretend that you are experiencing “thrills” and press the space bar a few times. To start the video, press the Return/Enter key; this will display the video in fullscreen. When the video comes to an end, press the esc key to close the fullscreen view. There’s not much audio in this video, but you can click the “test audio” button to ensure that your sound card is working (the ezdac~ should be “on” by default with the icon colored red). 2. Press the Return/Enter key to start the video in fullscreen view.
A sound card based multi-channel frequency measurement system