What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project? How are these risks being managed? What contingency plans are ready?
The most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of this project are edge cases in the music that can’t be properly analyzed for timing requirement and being unable to register all notes in that are being recorded by the musicians. This can be mitigated by changing the scope of our project by using simpler sheet music and having a more generous error tolerance to account fo those edge cases.
Were any changes made to the existing design of the system (requirements, block diagram, system spec, etc)? Why was this change necessary, what costs does the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward?
A major change we made to the existing project design was pivoting from the FPGA to a computer for the audio signal processing. This was done at the guidance of Prof. Dannenberg as he stated using an FPGA would be unnecessarily complex and a computer would still fulfill the necessary latency requirements. The audio processing is still a substantial task and the switch will not take away complexity from the project.
Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.
Due to the pivot, any FPGA related tasks have been changed. The audio processing task list and schedule has been updated as follows:
In the team report, please include A was written by Aakash, B was written by Ben and C was written by Mathias.
Part A: Our solution does not apply to considerations of public health, safety or welfare because we are working on a tool that helps musicians with performances. While getting better at performance can help someone’s psychological safety, there are no real physical safety or public health considerations to be made in this regard because we are just giving feedback and not impacting the real world.
Part B: Our solution involves music which is an innately cultural and social element. Our background and approach is from a Western perspective; the main bulk of our testing audio is gathered via musicians with Western Classical training. Though our design is mainly focused on synchronicity, generally a universal trait of all music, there may be some bias towards a specific feedback outcome informed by the style of music we are used to. That being said, the design, at a high level, is intended to aid in the creation of social experiences.
Part C: Our solution may be able to help people in terms of economic factors due to the application being provided being free. Traditionally music coaches can be pricey and although our application isn’t a complete substitute for a coach it can allow people who wouldn’t normally be able to afford one access to musical feedback that they wouldn’t otherwise have.