Summary of Patent

This patent is for the world’s first three-dimensional virtual sphere spatial music cognition metronome.

This metronome will give music practitioners the ability to enhance all aspects of their musical abilities. It will revolutionize metronomic pedagogy taking the baseline device way beyond enhancing perception of time and extending its skill enhancement power to all fundamental attributes of musicianship.

At the most fundamental level this metronome will improve spatial perception and cognitive capacity. This increased spatial acuity will greatly increase creativity and musicality.

The musician who is already practicing with a metronome will not have to change a thing about the way they practice. Like the benefits that accrue from regular use of a metronome, use of the spatial aspects of this invention will bring benefits over time to the practicing musician simply by using the invention during practice; simply by turning it on.

A brief uncomplicated illustration of this invention’s method may help to understand its significance.

Imagine a musician engaging in their daily routine practice of scales and arpeggios. The musician practices three exercises over the course of thirty minutes at three different tempos. The musician diligently makes use of a metronome to set the three tempos. The metronome is placed on a desk near the musician.

Now imagine this invention being used during the same practice. This invention makes possible the metronome sounding from anywhere in three-dimensional space. The metronome click can sound in front of, behind, above, beneath, to the left, to the right, in close, or far away from the practicing musician. This metronome can sound from anywhere in the three-dimensional space surrounding the musician.

Imagine a preprogrammed pathway for the metronome clicks to traverse in terms of sequential emanation points; creating a virtual sonic circumference around the practicing musician. The first metronome click emanates from a point in space directly in front of the musician. The next click emanates from a point in space the same distance from the musician but now fifteen degrees to the right. The third click remains at the same distance but has now moved an additional fifteen degrees clockwise in terms of the physical location from which the click is heard. This dynamic rotation of the click source continues for twenty-four clicks, returning the metronome click back to its starting point directly in front of the musician. The metronome click has now completely orbited the musician along the virtual circumference preprogrammed path. This circumference orbiting of the musician continues throughout this segment of the musician’s practice until the musician stops the preprogrammed function to set the tempo for the next segment of practice.

In the first example, the practicing musician benefits greatly over time from practicing with a metronome. The musician’s sense of tempo, rhythm, and time becomes much sharper and more precise. The regular use of a metronome changes the way the musician processes sound and music. Regular metronomic practice raises the level of the musician’s acuity and sensitivity to time. With regular practice the musician will come to cognize time differently.

Now imagine what will happen to a musician’s sense of sonic space after a sustained period of practicing with this invention. The greatly improved sense of time that occurs with the age-old metronome will continue as a benefit of practicing with this metronome, but something new will have been added as a benefit. Sonic spatial acuity and sensitivity will increase, changing the way in which the musician processes sound and music. The musician will become more adept at cognizing sonic space. Spatial depth perception will greatly increase, expanding and enhancing the value of regular practice.

The implications of this greater spatial acuity will also alter the way in which the musician perceives him- or herself within an ensemble, both within a given composition and within the overall spatial presentation of music.

And alteration of the practicing musician’s sense of space is just one of the fundamental ways in which this invention will enhance the musician’s acuity. The patent covers all fundamental attributes of sound and music. It covers distance and placement aspects of sound, the spatial aspects of sound, the movement aspects of sound, the volume and crescendo/decrescendo aspects of sound (emanation and decay aspects of sound), the dynamic aspects of sound, the color/timbral aspects of sound, the pitch/frequency aspects of sound, the harmonic and non-harmonic aspects of sound, and the orchestral aspects of sound.

This invention will have encyclopedic breadth and depth. It has the potential to infinitely enhance the skills of a practicing musician.

Music, like everything else in the world, will be increasingly and profoundly altered by augmented and virtual reality technology. The spatial immersive capacities of sound creation and reproduction will eventually give rise to new ways of conceptualizing music. This will lead to the creation of new forms and genres of music.

This invention will greatly assist in unlocking these and sundry latent creative human capacities in future generations of musicians.