The Studio
School Project - Major Project #2
For my final project at Kwantlen, we were giving the opportunity to work on any type of project that we desired. Something that we felt passionate about. Something that we felt would be a star in our personal portfolios. After two weeks of ideas, explorations, discussions with friends, family and instructors, I looked to create a tool that could be used to teach music to children.
During my research I found that the Coalition of Music Education in Canada had published a report on the state of music education in Canada, and they found several issues that emerged from their research
A need for more qualified music teachers
Continuing music advocacy
More support for generalist [elementary] classroom teachers
Better training for generalist teachers through universities
Passive music education [listening to music] is the most popular with gereralist teachers
The Studio is an App designed to help non-specailised teachers begin music education at a younger level without previous experience. The Studio's curriculum is divided in three experience levels, as well as 7 seperate subjects; Notation, Rythym, Ear Training, Chords, Theory, Genres, and Famous Figures. Each tutorial is accompanied with an instuctional video from a professional musician, as well as interactive sheet music on sheet so the student can follow along with the tutorial, and a on screen keyboard to see the piano keys light up as they are played in the video.
When student are ready to attempt the tutorial from themselves, the screen fills with the interactive sheets music and the onscreen keyboard.
*Side Note: The on screen keyboard is an effective tool for the beginner levels of the program, however in the more advance levels it is highly encouraged that students of The Studio use an external Keyboard. This also allows people the oppotunity to try out The Studio without investing money into it.
The interactive sheets music has a indicator bar that follows along the music in time to the metronome, and as the indicator bar travels past each note, if played correctly the note will turn green, and if played wrong turns red. At the end of each tutorial there is a "tutorial tracker" that allows users to track their progress and even post scores to various social media such as facebook and twitter.
Beyond the basics of music education, the Studio also allows students to learn published music. Covering multiple genres, and experience levels, The Studio looks to show its students the "fun side" of music. Like the tutorials, The Studio tracks the progress of the songs attempted and allows students to publish their scores and challenge their friends to do better online.
Although The Studio was conceived to be used for students in school, I believe that there would be great interest with the general public and people of any age looking to get into music, or even looking to learn how to play some of their favourite music.
