A new way to play music together: The Continuator in the classroom

Abstract

This article describes a didactic experience concerning the interaction between young children and the Continuator, an Interactive Reflexive Musical System (IRMS) elaborated at SONY- Computer Science Laboratory in Paris. The general aim was to analyse whether and how the Continuator can be used in the kindergartner during the daily school activities and the role of the teacher in the context of free play and in guided activities with the system. The experience took place in Bologna (Italy) and involved 18 children aged 3–5 years. The children learned to dialogue musically with the system and to manage various kinds of collaborative play. These factors gave rise to some particularly attentive and prolonged bouts of listening, stimulating the children to think in terms of sound and developing a genuine desire to “play” with music. This experience shows how the Continuator could represent a versatile device capable of enhancing musical creativity and exploration in a classroom setting.

Keywords

classroom setting collaborative learning Continuator music creativity new technologies

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Addessi

A. R.

Pachet

(2005). Experiments with a musical machine: Music style replication in 3/5 year old children. British Journal of Music Education, 22(1), 21–46.

Addessi

A. R.

Pachet

(2006). Young children confronting the Continuator, an interactive reflective musical system. Musicae Scientiae, Special Issue 2005–2006, 13–39.

Addessi

A. R.

Ferrari

Carlotti

Pachet

(2006, August). Young children’ musical experiences with a flow machine. In Baroni

Addessi

A. R.

Caterina

Costa

(Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC9) (pp. 1658–1664). Bologna, Italy: Bononia University Press.

Addessi

A. R.

Volpe

(2011, September). The MIROR Project. In Delgados Kloos

Gillet

Crespo García

R. M.

Wild

Wolpers

(Eds.), Towards ubiquitous learning. Proceedings of the Sixth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2011) (pp. 15–28). Berlin, Germany: Springer Verlag.

Bandura

(1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W. H. Freeman.

Brown

A. R.

(2007). Computers in music education. Amplifying musicality. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Burnard

(2006). The individual and social worlds of children’s musical creativity. In McPherson

(Ed.), The child as musician: a handbook of musical development (pp. 353–372). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Crook

(1994). Computers and the collaborative experience of learning. London, UK: Routledge.

Csikzsentmihalyi

(1996). Creativity. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

10.

Custodero

L. A.

(2005). Observable indicators of flow experience: A developmental perspectives on musical engagement in young children from infancy to school age. Music Education Research, 7(2), 185–209.

11.

Delalande

(2001). La musica è un gioco da bambini [The music is a child’s play]. Milan, Italy: Franco Angeli Editori.

12.

Frapat

(1994). L’invenzione musicale nella scuola dell’infanzia [The musical invention in the kindergarten]. Bergamo, Italy: Junior Edizioni.

13.

Guerra

(Ed.). (2002). Educazione e tecnologie. I nuovi strumenti della mediazione didattica [Education and technology. New tools of teaching mediation]. Bergamo, Italy: Junior Edizioni.

14.

Imberty

(2002). Il bambino e la musica [The child and the music]. In Nattiez

J. J.

(Ed.), Enciclopedia della Musica [Encyclopedia of Music] (Vol. II, pp. 477–495). Turin, Italy: Einaudi.

15.

McPherson

(2005). From child to musician: Skill development during the beginning stages of learning an instrument. Psychology of Music, 33(1), 5–35.

16.

Pachet

(2003). The Continuator: Musical interaction with style. Journal of New Music Research, 32(3), 333–341.

17.

Pachet

(2006). Enhancing individual creativity with Interactive Musical Reflective Systems. In Deliège

Wiggins

G. H.

(Eds.), Musical creativity: Multidisciplinary research in theory and practice (pp. 359–375). Hove, UK: Psychology Press.

18.

Pachet

(2010). The future of content is in ourselves. In Tokoro

(Ed.), Open systems science. From understanding principles to solving problems (pp. 133–157). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: IOS Press.

19.

Savage

(2006). Working toward a theory for music technologies in the classroom: How pupils engage with and organize sounds with new technologies. British Journal of Music Education, 22(2), 167–180.

20.

Seddon

F. A.

(2006). Collaborative computer-mediated music composition in cyberspace. British Journal of Music Education, 23(3), 273–283.

21.

Stern

(1995). The motherhood constellation. New York, NY: Basic Books.

22.

Williams

D. B.

Webster

P. R.

(2006). Experiencing music technology (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Higher Education, Wadsworth.

23.

Young

(2003). Time-space structuring in spontaneous play on educational percussion instruments among three and four-year-olds. British Journal of Music Education, 20(1), 45–59.