Teaching elementary school students new method of music performance with Leap Motion

Abstract

As the world continue to embrace motion recognition technology in recent years, it had also open up a new method for performing and learning music with motion recognition devices. In 2013, Leap Motion was released. It is a programmable motion recognition device, ticking the requirement needed by the Author to design a new software and application for music education. This research focus on the the process of creating a new software that will use the Leap Motion technology for music education class at elementary school. The research is meant to develop alternative ways in teaching music and performing for children, not to replace the traditional teaching method. The paper will talk about the whole experience of designing, implementing, and testing the usage of Leap Motion for music education. The research consist of two phase. The first phase is the music software design. It had 2 main program. The first program is the performance application, students can use both of their hands to perform music through the software, limited only to monophonic melody. The right hand will be positioned to control the pitch, on a one octave diatonic scale. The left hand will be positioned to control the note on and note off. Through the combination of these hand position, the student will be able to play one note at a time, a mono sine wave sound. The second program is the game application, student can practice their hand movement and carry out their music practice with this music application that's designed to mimic note scrolling music video games like the one found on commercial video games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero. A series of notes can be seen on the software user interface and they can practice to position their hand at the right moment to perform the right melody of the music piece. This music software is aimed toward first and second grade of elementary school student as it can be devised as a tool to help the student to learn melody and rhythm in music. The second phase of the research is a field study to measure the effectiveness of teaching this new method of music education through survey. The survey conclude that the there's still a long way to go to create an ideal motion recognition music based application. Through this survey we have collected data that consist of the the positives and negative opinion on the students experience with the software.