Tangible music composer for children

Abstract

Music education should start from an early age. Theories of child development and learning emphasize the importance of manipulating physical objects. Music learning and teaching has traditionally been carried out mainly by visual and auditory activities. With this in mind, we combine music learning with tangible interfaces to stimulate senses toward music in children over six years old. We present a token+constraint tangible interface for children to learn musical skills such as musical notes, rhythm and the sound of different instruments. The work describes a low-cost tangible interface addressed to children that allows learning music in an intuitive, incremental and collaborative manner. The system recognizes in real-time preestablished patterns and associates them with musical notes and instruments to allow composing music. The system was designed to be usable and to benefit from the advantages that tangible interfaces can provide to children. Furthermore, it was implemented with low cost and easy to get tools and resources, such as wooden boards and a standard webcam