Toy Concert / A Music Technology Project for Children Keywords: - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Toy Concert / A Music Technology Project for Children Keywords: #Instrument #Toy #Instrumental Toy #Kids #Music #Education #Composition #Improvisation #Creati vity #Enjoy #HaveFun #Make some (funny) noise Contents: Who are we designing for? Why are we doing this within a slightly crowded market? What are the aims & how to achieve those? When & where - the potential context of use

Who / Little Elsa and her life Little Elsa At the beginning, the user group was identified as ‘kids around 8-12 years old who play instruments’ . The age group was chosen according to a similar project* carried out by a research group at MIT Media Lab. During research, however, EVERY parent I talked to told me that their kid(s) play some kind of instrument! For this reason, I went to a family, talked to the parents & the kid, dived into detailed issues in their daily life, and had a great time playing music with the little girl. Elsa is a character I have created mostly based on this little girl. Insights obtained from observations and interactions with other kids during the research also informed the description of her life: family, education, personalities, interests, emotions, etc. *Toy symphony: An International Music Technology Project For Children https://www.cs.tcd.ie/disciplines/information_systems/- crite/crite_web/publications/sources/ToySymphonyMEI-03.pdf

Who / Little Elsa and her life Elsa is 8 years old. She’s an only child. Last year, she moved from Italy to UK with her family, and now goes to an international primary school. She needs to learn Italian to communicate with her family, and also learns English 8 years old only child moved to UK to communicate with friends and with her family teachers. There are so many things to learn and adapt to! And such pressure puts her family under a slightly tiring routine. She regularly goes to a violin class. Her teacher is very strict, con- stantly asking her to learn to play violin international one-to-one songs perfectly - pure replication primary school & correction. To be honest, she’s a (beginner) lessons little bit bored.

Who / Little Elsa and her life stress #learning languages #communication #homework boredom a slightly boring routine (even on weekends / holidays) Introverted A love for animals & quiet giggles when she makes weird & goofy noises Elsa resembles her mother. She’s a bit shy to make new with her violin friends, and barely spares time to go outdoors. Her best friend is probably her kitten - oh, and she loves ani- mals! excitements Despite the stressful, tiring and usually boring routine, when she manages to use her violin bow she has her own little moments of giggles and excite- to play her friend’s guitar ments. She is brave and curious enough to keep experi- menting and exploring small things. She chuckles when when she says “oh, that sound is just like a fish jumping out of water!” it doesn’t quite work, and her eyes will shine like stars upon her discoveries and creations - just like any kid in or when she ‘writes a song’ to show off the world. to her parents and asks them if they like it

Why / Is making music meant to be a privilege for those grown-ups and PROs? Art (re)creation Every child is an artist. Adults can learn so much from their sponta- neity and intuitions. The problem is how to remain that innate talent throughout art education (in our case: music education) . We teach them about the rules in our adult world, and try to equip them with skills and theories. It seems, however, that it often takes too long and too much effort to get to that stage where they finally gain the freedom to express their thoughts and feelings. There are many products designed to help people learn, play and create music. “In many cases these tools are either designed for the profession- al user and so are too complex and unwieldy for the novice, or are too simplistic in their range and depth to allow for the sort of powerful musical experience which we might wish children to have.” (-ref: Toy Symphony)

Why / Is making music meant to be a privilege for those grown-ups and PROs? Lessons In-person / online It is generally accepted that people Musical interact with music in three approaches - listening, performing Education and composing. for kids (and adults) It is easy to find lessons to take and books to read nowadays - for all ages and skill levels. You can find resources to help improve & increase your music skills and Books knowledge, as well as those teaching you how to make music. You can listen to various types of music, learn to play certain songs, as well as try to write a song or jam along with a backing track. However, it seems that children’s musical education is often more on the training end and is less likely to encourage them to just experiment and explore. They’re asked to listen, exercise & replicate more often than to create - and they’re faced with Instrumental Music intimidating things to understand skills Theories and memorize.

Why / Is making music meant to be a privilege for those grown-ups and PROs? hardware Products a r e m a e l b o (physical) r p softwares & r u o s i hardwares s i h T Fisher Price There are already too many musical products Guitar Tabber out there: hardware or software, for profes- sional or for novice, for adults or for children. On the hardware (physical) end, there are Schoenhut plenty of physical products - either Little Tikes Jamstik Children Chordbuddy Adults stand-alone instruments or gadgets that help and/or and/or with the learning process. On the software novice professional (virtual) end, it seems that there are even more products available. /* It is worth mentioning that children (adults) Guitar Pro CuBase doesn’t necessarily corresponds to novice (pro- Beatwave Chrome fessional) - skill & knowledge level would be a Music Lab more appropriate parameter. Also, many software tools such as Garage Band are designed to be very friendly to novice as well, Garage Band but they are usually more suitable for adults Figure who have basic software skills and music software common sense. */ (virtual)

Why / Is making music meant to be a privilege for those grown-ups and PROs? Musical Instruments for kids Let’s take a closer look at musical instruments for kids. mini version colours&shapes To a large extent, they are ‘mini version’ of those instruments for adults. The range of possibilities is significantly reduced. For instance, a child can only hit 25 keys on a Schoenhut toy piano, compared to 88 keys on a regular piano. (Even worse, there are only 8 keys on a toy xylophone!) Moreover, the sound quality & accuracy of these toys are barely satisfactory. (e.g. the xylophone I bought was so poorly in tune that I slightly regret thinking of using it as a ‘prototype’ for testing.) As the child grow up and become more skilled & informed, they’ll soon find out that these products with such constraints can no longer satisfy their needs to venture wider and deeper into the music world.

Why / Is making music meant to be a privilege for those grown-ups and PROs? m a r e a e l b o r p r u o s i s i h T Fisher Price What the market looks like What the market is actually like Schoenhut Little Tikes It seemed that the market is pretty much satu- rated - with products spreading out all over the spectrums of skill levels and hardware/software - but something’s missing. If we take a closer look, we’ll notice that these products could be largely improved to provide children with much more The 3rd dimension: Or: the 3rd dimension: powerful & long-lasting musical experience. How much can I How soon will I get bored of it? explore and learn?

What & how / An easy musical instrument & a (secretly) ‘serious’ toy Melody + Rhythm Guitar players can grab their guitars, hang out with friends and enjoy a jamming session. They are able to share the melodies and rhythms in their minds to create pleasant experience, because they have enough skills and knowledge for improvisation. What if two kids can each carry a toy and share the notes & chords they could play easily, make some noise and have a laugh? What if we could lower the prerequisite, so that they don't need to wait to grow up and train themselves to be skilled enough to do so? Notes! + Chords!

What & how / An easy musical instrument & a (secretly) ‘serious’ toy high theories playful quality made easy experience In order to achieve this, we could create a There are several messages that we hope the simplified musical instrument, remaining the product could convey. We hope that children range of possibilities and quality of sound will become more confident about their that a real instrument would normally abilities that are often unrevealed, more provide. We could use metaphors to carefully comfortable to experiment and make mis- hide the theories behind so that kids won't takes, more likely to enjoy creating some- necessarily need to worry about them at this thing new with someone else, and less afraid age, yet when they look back at some point of the difficult and the unknown. they’ll realise: Oh, this is why it’s like this.