The impact of haptic guidance on musical motor learning

Skilled musical performance provides one of the best demonstrations of the upper limits of the human motor system's capabilities. It is therefore not surprising that learning to play an instrument is a long and difficult process. Teachers and education researchers alike have long since recognized that while learning rate is dependent on the quantity of practice, perhaps even more important is the quality of that practice. However, for non-trivial skills such as music performance, just gaining an understanding of what physical movements are required can be challenging since they are often difficult to describe verbally. Music teachers often communicate complex gesture by physically guiding their students' hands through the required motions. However, at best, this gives a rough approximation of the target movement and begs the question of whether technology might be leveraged to provide a more accurate form of physical guidance. The success of such a system could lead to significant advancements in music pedagogy by speeding and easing the learning process and providing a more effective means of home instruction. This thesis proposes a "learning-by-feel" approach to percussion instruction and presents two different systems to test the effect of guidance on motor learning. The first system, called the FielDrum, uses a combination of permanent and electromagnets to guide a player's drumstick tip through the motions involved in the performance of arbitrary rhythmic patterns. The second system, called the Haptic Guidance System, uses a servo motor and optical encoder pairing to provide precise measurement and playback of motions approximating those involved in snaredrum performance. This device was used in a pilot study of the effects of physical guidance on percussion learning.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Grindlay, Graham Charles

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Tod Machover.

• Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/41562

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/41562