Team & History

Insignt about why I sing off-pitch:  I am an enthusiastic and incompetent singer.   One day,  I asked Eric Hanson (co-inventor and colleague in our music faculty) why I couldn't "carry a tune."   He shared a key observation that people who sing off-pitch sing notes whose harmonic series include the correct note.  Since I already knew that voice is (substantially) a harmonic series, I realized that I mis-identify a loud vocal overtone as my larangial (vocal chord) pitch. and hypothesized that a system that made my larangeal pitch more prominent could enable me to sing on-pitch.

Our initial product: While UTEP (the university I work for) filed for patent protection, I and a friend in our electrical engineering department built a toy implementation that enabled me to sing on-pitch.  After improving the design (and UTEP filed a few more patents), I licensed the intellecutual property and founded Freudensong LLC.  Our first project was the development of a mobile app called "KnowPitch" that enabled enthusiastic earbud-wearing users to discover the joys of (competent) social singing.   

Horrible timing and fortuitus discoveries: We were planning to launch KnowPitch during the winter of 2019-2020.   Sadly, this was the same moment that the COVID-19 pandemic rendered social singing a dangerous pastime.   Our pivot was to follow up on two fortuitus observations:  Firstly, my students and colleagues told me that KnowPitch tamed my (apparently off-putting) "loud and pushy New York" speaking voice.  Secondly, while debugging a software implementation of KnowPitch, we discovered how to build a version that, while not effective for singing, tamed my speaking voice without the need for earbuds.   

An inconvenient almost-product: SoothingResonance was an implementation of Resonero that required users to attach an external speaker to their mobile phone.  It worked great, but was a nuisance to use because it interefered with their mobile devices' other functions.   The few people who used this app observed that the effects were broader than just soothing.  When it was present, we were more aware of others' emotions, and they were better aware of ours.   This observation led us to realize that, while singing well is a want, communicating well is a need.

A prototype that changes people's lives: We gave our current Resonero prototypes to a few people with low to middling emotional IQ.   They told us that it vastly improved their personal and professional lives.   They asked for more units because their interations with others are not limited to one room.  

My hope is for our initial Kickstarter launch of Resonero to, beyond enabling high functioning people who are a bit rough about the edges to enjoy the benefits of resonant communication, it will raise funds necessary to accelrate our research into potential medical applications that will hopefully benefit people with much more  profound communication challenges.

Kevin Moreno first encountered Eric’s work as an undergraduate in computer science at UTEP.  During a class, Eric demonstrated an early version of the system.  Kevin immediately recognized a fascinating overlap between what he was learning in computation and the way sound waves interact with the human experience. That moment pulled him into the project’s orbit, eventually guiding his path into a PhD in Biomedical Engineering with an application in psychoacoustic informatics