Let's Play! and Sensing

A design to assist a music instrument instructor to better explain the logic behind note reading. The staff board will help during explanation phase and the technical cards will serve as informational materials.

Design and purpose

This design is based on some existing YouTube tutorials on how to read notes. The design consists of a technical card and a sight-reading staff board. The purpose of this design is to assist a music instrument instructor to better explain the logic behind note reading. The staff board will help during explanation phase and the technical cards will serve as informational materials. The primary user of this design will be a music instrument instructor and secondary user will be the learner.

Limitation

The limitation of this design is that the primary user will be required to have knowledge about international music notes and know how to explain well because the design does not provide any explanation or basic information about notes.

Process

The process of this project is different from the other projects. Unlike the other projects, I did not need to study my participant to know the participant's problems. He knew how to play chords with keyboard and how to play guitar well. Now he wanted to learn to read notes to play hymn songs. The participant himself asked me to help him in learning piano notes. His motivation insisted me to find ways to help him understand and learn piano notes in easier and better way.

So in interviewing phase, I tired to learn more about his strengths and weaknesses to know how to assist him. I did SWOT analysis about his learning capability.

SWOT analysis

According to him, he learns better if he understands the theory well rather than memorizing without knowing the theory behind. Based on that, I tried to search for existing tutorials. Then i picked three concepts that I thought could be used for my design.

The first one was understanding the value of notes by gaining knowledge about the quality and quantity of each notes.

The second one was landmark system from the tutorial called How to Read Notes Fast - The Landmark System by Musicians Inspired channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSOU-J9KHbg

The third one is the sight-reading staff board from How To Read Notes (Beginner Piano Lesson) by Pianote. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEI7uYOCQXo

Prototype and Testing

Staff board illustration

Technical cards

I tested the prototype with him on the week before he went back to Myanmar because of his health issue. I showed illustrated him the system of the whole note staff by placing little buttons on the staff board. He admitted that seeing the connection between notes by this illustration made more sense to him than just memorizing the notes according to their positions on the staff.

Conclusion

The idea of using the staff board while explaining about notes incorporate the sense of seeing that could help him better understand the connection of the whole system. That could ultimately help him to better recognize the notes.

Reflection

This design (combination of different tools) was not the original ideas that came from me. I took it from piano note tutorials from YouTube. Yet what I have done with this is extending accessibility. Because my participant would not be able to learn if I just gave him the link of those tutorials because he didn’t understand English. Me as both a designer of this project and as a musical instructor adapted it in our own language and ways of explaining.