It's time to get back on the blog wagon. It's been a while since I've made an entry so I will have to do some catch up.

I saw a very interesting presentation a while back in one of my other classes. It was a guy who develops tools for music education based on the controls and interfaces for games such as Guitar Hero. What was fascinating was that he developed he programed his own software to be compatible with nearly any device. You are able to assign sounds and or functions to various buttons, strings, triggers....etc, for a variety of results. He explained that the kids, teens, and adults that tried the techniques always had a lot of fun and became very enthused. He described how he had young kids, who were already familiar with a guitar type controller, learn to play songs, improvise, and coordinate ensembles without reading notes. They simply would press the blue key, or green bar, to produce whatever sound they desired. He also showed us controllers based on the popular interactive dance games that are layed on the floor with different sensors for your feet. The fact that his software could be used with any device, and was easily customizable made extremely accessible to a wide variety of people.

The only draw back I can possibly think of to this would be that it might the process of learning to read music for some students. This however is probably a weak argument against the world of accessible music making that this brings to students. I would also guess that many times certain students can be turned off by having to read notes, and decide they want to get out of music in the very beginning, where if they had a guitar hero controller, they would get more immediate satisfaction and explore further. All in all, I really enjoyed the presentation and it made me think of how the future of music education is moving in this direction. I can't think of any better and faster way to peak a student's interest then to teach them music with the tools and instruments they have already been using at home.