ï~~Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2009), Montreal, Canada
August 16-21, 2009
CODY'S CORNER: DESIGN & IMPLEMENTATION OF AN
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL COMPUTER MUSIC INSTALLATION
Joel Rathgaber, David Gerhard
University of Regina
Computer Science Department
[email protected],
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
In this paper we present the design and implementation of
Cody's Corner, an interactive computer music installation
targeted at an elementary school. The goal of Cody's
Corner is to let children pick up a familiar instrument, in
this case a guitar, and play it by using gestures and simple
actions they already know. Cody's Corner is fun,
interactive and educational, allowing students to explore
music without the frustrations and learning curve of a
traditional instrument.
1. BACKGROUND
Cody's Corner is an interactive computer music installation
at an elementary school in Balgonie, Saskatchewan,
Canada. The installation is in honour of a former student,
Cody, who passed away from cancer in 2007, one day
before turning 9 years old. The space was intended to
capture Cody's fun-loving and free spirit, and provide a
space for the students to be creative, collaborate and have
fun. The project goals were to create a space that
incorporated electronics, computers and music, as these
were all things the Cody loved. The final design included a
custom built digital guitar and drum-loop machine, both
connected to a computer, where custom software allows
performers to customize their instruments and record their
music.
2. DESIGN
Due to the nature of the installation, a few constraints on
the instruments needed to be determined. First, the
instrument had to be familiar to kids. Secondly, it needed
to be easy for elementary school age kids to play. We
needed to take into account the size of the kids hands, their
dexterity, the size of their bodies and their level of
musicality. Third, it had to be robust. The instrument has
to withstand everyday use in an elementary school setting.
It cannot have small or fragile parts that could break or get
lost. It had to be able to take an occasional drop and
shaking that might happen when the kids get excited.
Based on these constraints, we decided to create two
instruments; a digital guitar and a beat-box. The guitar is
the main instrument and will be the focus of Cody's
Corner, with the beat-box being used to support the guitar
by allowing kids to create beats and rhythms. The
instruments conform to the constraints identified in the
following ways.
2.1. Design of Digital Guitar
A guitar is a very well known and popular instrument. The
gestures are well recognized and imitated through 'Air
Guitar' playing. It has also been popularized lately with
the development of console games Guitar Hero' and
Rockband2. We decided to modify an electric guitar
extensively and replace the traditional circuits, strings,
pickups and fretboard with digital circuits and sensors..
2.1.1. Finger placement
We decided to mimic the gesture of pressing a string to a
fret by replacing the frets and fretboard with touch sensors.
We hoped that this would simplify the act of note selection
from being very precise finger placement to instead
something that required less dexterity and finger control.
We also wanted to limit the ambiguity of the available
notes. A guitar with 6 strings and 24 frets can produce 36
unique notes using a standard tuning. There are however
144 different places to place a finger on the neck and 6
notes that can be generated by not placing a finger on the
neck (an open string). Some notes can be generated using
6 different finger placements on the neck. This introduces
a complexity that we wanted to avoid. In our guitar we
only allow a relatively small number of touch sensors and
only one finger position on the neck to generate the desired
note.
1 http://www.guitarhero.com/
2 http://www.rockband.com/
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