A piano duo support system for parents to lead children to practice musical performances

ABSTRACT

In this article, we propose “Family Ensemble,” a piano duo support system for a musically inept parent and his/her child who is a beginner at playing the piano. The system makes it easier for parents to correctly reproduce a given sequence of pitches along with the child's performance by using score tracking and note-replacement functions. The experiments with this support system showed that the parents can immediately participate in the piano duo. Furthermore, we found that during joint practices using Family Ensemble some subjects discussed musical ideas that they would not have talked about without using the system.

REFERENCES

• 1: Agay, D. 1987. Learning to Play Piano: Book 1. Yorktown Music Press.
• 2: Tina Blaine , Tim Perkis, The Jam-O-Drum interactive music system: a study in interaction design, Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques, p.165-173, August 17-19, 2000, New York City, New York, United States [doi>10.1145/347642.347705]
• 3: Bloch, J. and Dannenberg, R. B. 1985. Real-time computer accompaniment of keyboard performance. In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC). International Computer Music Association (ICMA). 279--289.
• 4: Casio. 2000. LK-55 Full Size Keyboard with Key Lighting System. Casio, http://www.casio.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=products.detail&product=LK%2D55.
• 5: Dannenberg, R. B. 1984. An online algorithm for real-time accompaniment. In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC). International Computer Music Association (ICMA). 193--198.
• 6: Everett, C. 1999. Piano Education Page---Artist/Educator Archive Interview---. Zeigler, J. M. and Ostromencki, N. L., http://pianoeducation.org/pnoevret.html.
• 7: Farbood, M., Pazstor, E., and Jennings, K. 2004. Hyperscore, a graphical approach to composing music. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Special Issue on Emerging Technologies, 50--54.
• 8: Goto, M., Hidaka, I., Matsumoto, H., Kuroda, Y., and Muraoka, Y. 1996. A jazz session system for interplay among all players---virja session (virtual jazz session system)---. In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC). International Computer Music Association (ICMA). 346--349.
• 9: Grubb, L. and Dannenberg, R. B. 1997. A stochastic method of tracking a vocal performer. In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC). International Computer Music Association (ICMA). 301--308.
• 10: Jennings, K. 2003. Toy symphony: An international music technology project for children. Music Education International 2, 3--21.
• 11: Kihara, R. 1991. Piano Land, vol. 1--5, with music data (an educational material in Japan). Ongakunotomo-sya.
• 12: Lyke, J. 2004. Piano Education Page---Artist/Educator Archive Interview---. Zeigler, J. M. and Ostromencki, N. L., http://pianoeducation.org/pnojlyke.html.
• 13: Kevin Jennings , Brendan Tangney, Virtual collaborative learning environments for music: networked drumsteps, Computers & Education, v.44 n.2, p.173-195, February 2005 [doi>10.1016/j.compedu.2004.08.004]
• 14: Miyoshi, A. 1977. Miyoshi Piano Method, vol. 1--8 (an educational material in Japan). Kawai.
• 15: Miyoshi, A. 2000. Piano duo sympathetic world outside language. MUSICA NOVA 31, 9, 30--32.
• 16: Nicola Orio , Serge Lemouton , Diemo Schwarz, Score following: state of the art and new developments, Proceedings of the 2003 conference on New interfaces for musical expression, May 22-24, 2003, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
• 17: Chika Oshima , Kazushi Nishimoto , Masami Suzuki, Family ensemble: a collaborative musical edutainment system for children and parents, Proceedings of the 12th annual ACM international conference on Multimedia, October 10-16, 2004, New York, NY, USA [doi>10.1145/1027527.1027662]
• 18: Oshima, C. and Shimojima, A. 2003. Grounding function of instrument plays in dialogue: A case-study of piano duos in joint practice. In Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
• 19: Francois Pachet , Anna Rita Addessi, When children reflect on their own playing style: experiments with continuator and children, Computers in Entertainment (CIE), v.2 n.1, January 2004 [doi>10.1145/973801.973824]
• 20: Raphael, C. 2001. A probabilistic expert system for automatic musical accompaniment. J. Comput. Graph. Stats. 10, 3, 487--512.
• 21: Rencon. 2000. Rencon (performance RENdering piano Contest). http://shouchan.ei.tuat.ac.jp/~rencon/index.shtml.
• 22: Stephen W. Smoliar , John A. Waterworth , Peter R. Kellock, pianoFORTE: a system for piano education beyond notation literacy, Proceedings of the third ACM international conference on Multimedia, p.457-465, November 05-09, 1995, San Francisco, California, United States [doi>10.1145/217279.215310]
• 23: Subotnick, M. 1997. ghost. http://www.mortonsubotnick.com/about.html.
• 24: Takeuchi, Y. and Katayose, H. 1995. Representation of music expression with two finger piano. In IPSJ SIGNotes Music and Computer. IPSJ, 37--44.
• 25: Toyoda, K. S. 1995. Compact Disc, Japanese Song Without Instrumental Accompaniment. Victor Entertainment, VICC-169.
• 26: Vercoe, B. 1984. The synthetic performer in the context of live performance. In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC). International Computer Music Association (ICMA) 301--308.
• 27: Zeigler, J. and Ostromencki, N. 2004. Piano Education Page---Tips Performance---. http://pianoeducation.org/pnotperf.html.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.5 Sound and Music Computing
          Subjects: Systems

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.1 Computer Uses in Education
          Subjects: Collaborative learning

General Terms:
Experimentation

Keywords:
Piano duo, entertainment, musical expression, score tracking, support system