Software brings promise of a makeover for music
By Tom Spalding
After another long workday last week, Ken Lemons opened a book that plays recorded bird songs and let the throaty call of the tufted puffin take flight on the office's speaker system.
The sound launched chuckles among the 18 employees in the Downtown office of Musical DNA Software. But it's the startup's computer interpretation of such sounds that they hope will be taken seriously in fields ranging from music education to high-tech science and medicine, and even voice-powered security systems.
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Musical DNA is just four to six weeks away from the launch of its first product, a software program that imports sounds from a piano or other musical instrument and turns them into a color-coded rainbow that precisely plots each note on a circular grid on a user's computer screen.
"It's essentially a visual translation of the language of music," said Lemons, 34, who founded the company in 2006.
The hope is that the software will launch a new way of teaching and learning music. Instead of playing notes from sheet music, students could learn -- or even compose music -- by visualizing the notes on Musical DNA's colorful grid.
The approach is winning the confidence of music enthusiasts, investors and the Indiana Economic Development Corp.
After raising more than $1 million from angel investors, Musical DNA last month landed up to $1.1 million in performance-based tax credits and up to $48,500 in training grants from the state in exchange for its plans to add 100 people to its staff at the Stutz Business Center by 2015.
Musical DNA will start by selling the software on its Web site, but it hopes to use the technology for other projects. It is developing three prototype concept toys and is in discussions with computer and game companies to manufacture other products.
The toys include:
A projector that attaches to a child's crib, projecting color-coded animated geometry of music of whatever source the parent desires.
A 12-note Simon Says game of musical geometry that teaches basic shapes of sound in a game format, including connect-the-dots.
A child's guitar, with four buttons: happy, sad, spooky, dreamy -- the four basic triangles of musical sound.
Trained musicians see huge potential for the software.
"It can be explosively profitable," said G. David Peters, director at Indiana University School of Music in Indianapolis, who says a new way of looking at tunes has market potential in the MP3 age.
Nearly a third of the 4,000 undergraduates in the music school on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis campus take online classes and would be comfortable with this learning method, he says.
"We use every visual combined multimedia trick you can imagine . . . but we (now) have this linear, two-dimensional view of music. It's not a stretch of the imagination that Ken is thinking of this in three and four dimensions."
And not just with music, but with all sorts of sounds.
Musical DNA has applied for more than 40 patents and has at least eight trademarks filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The company has been gaining attention by appearing at toy and licensing expos across the country.
The patents would apply to uses such as music visualization, voice and sound identification, instrument tuning, speech therapy and interpretation of sounds such as heartbeats for medical applications.
Steve Campbell, former Indianapolis deputy mayor, recently joined the company in a legal and marketing role. He also plays bass. He said musicians and music teachers grasp Lemons' concepts "right off the bat."
For people without a musical background, the software requires more explanation. But, Campbell adds, "Literally every time I tell somebody about it they say 'you can use it for X, Y and Z.' "
The multiple uses reflect Lemons' varied interests. As a college student, he attended five universities and had eight majors over 13 years. His areas of study included engineering, anthropology, oil painting, sociology, theater and sound design. Ultimately, he earned a bachelor's degree in piano performance from the University of Nebraska and a master's degree in music from Butler University.
One thing he has settled on is his music software.
Lemons likes the fact that his invention is hitting the market at a time when computer users have grown accustomed to games like Guitar Hero that also use musical color-coding, albeit in a much more simplistic way.
The game uses a guitar-shaped controller to simulate the playing of music, represented on-screen by colored notes that correspond to colored fret buttons on the controller. And it has legions of loyal fans across the globe.
Could Musical DNA be the next big hit?
"I can think of no better time than this," Lemons said. Call Star reporter Tom Spalding at (317) 444-6202.