Marble track music sequencers for children

Type: conference paper

Authors: Thomas Fischer, Wing Lau

Abstract
We discuss the development of electronically enhanced construction kits for marble tracks that act as music sequencers for music education of young children. Marbles rolling along the tracks trigger sound events to produce the playback of musical notes and songs. Re-arrangeable tangible elements correspond to timing, durations and pitches of notes and thus allow electronic music sequencing by means of haptic programming. This approach to early music education separates the different tasks of melody making and instrument manipulation, aiming at faster success and fewer frustrating learning experiences. We present two marble track designs: an earlier one, which is based on a central synthesizer and a system-wide communication bus and a second one based on multiple decentralized synthesizer units. We discuss previous work in the field of machine-readable models and haptic programming and report on experiences with both sequencer designs including user tests of the second design.

URL: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1139073.1139108

Associated tags
metadata ▸ material ▸ Marble Track
metadata ▸ contribution ▸ Evaluation
metadata ▸ year ▸ 2006
technological dimension ▸ applications ▸ Tangible computing
technological dimension ▸ input technologies ▸ Tangibles, wearables
technological dimension ▸ system outputs ▸ Audio
musical dimension ▸ activities ▸ Creating
pedagogical dimension ▸ learning theories ▸ Constructivism
pedagogical dimension ▸ users ▸ Pre-school, primary
pedagogical dimension ▸ venues ▸ Lab