TouchTone - musical creativity and cerebral palsy
Keywords: Products
Team: Soumitra Bhat
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Problem. Children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy often lack the physical skills to explore their environment independently, express feelings, communicate, and successfully participate in social activities. Creative music therapy aims to improve this situation by specifically addressing the emotional and social needs of these children. However, to be successful at these levels, the children need to have basic control over the musical instruments used in the therapy sessions. Traditional acoustic musical instruments demand high levels of sensori-motor coordination and precision making them difficult to control – thus affecting the efficacy of music therapy.
Approach. Using a participatory design method involving music therapists and children, TouchTone is an electronic musical instrument designed with a vision to develop musical ability, develop bimanual coordination and increase social participation of children with hemiplegia. It deliberately encourages physical engagement through tangible interface design to support musical creativity in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy. It is designed to share the family of ‘Orff’ instruments, thereby placing it within a popular, historic musical education program for children.
The following are the most important features of TouchTone:
1. Helps children develop musical ability by allowing them to practice rhythm, scales, modes, melody, harmony. Children can use it as a companion for music education programs.
2. Matches the development of children, and can help improve bimanual coordination by encouraging the use of the affected hand to actively participate in music performance.
3. Provides an opportunity to play ensemble with other musicians by allowing playing as a lead as well as an accompanying instrument.
4. Incorporates a learning module which can help therapists and children record exercises and set developmental goals. Children can visually follow an exercise on the instrument by following the LED indicator next to the specific pad.
Results. The instrument was found to offer a very high playability across variations in physical ability. Children could immediately understand the interaction and start playing the instrument. They displayed prolonged attention and concentration spans and actively engaged in exploring the instrument. The clear cause-effect relationship between action and sound aided this involvement and exploration. Children found using the Octave Jump function with the affected hand to be a challenge, but they displayed significant progress in using both their hands in coordination.