Solo Board

Teaching students to create and develop interesting and expressive solo techniques

Overview:
The experience with the Solo Board is interactive and self-oriented. The participant is provided a chance
to explore how different notes and grooves work together, or contrast one another. To begin, they will
get to customize a background style. They can choose from strings, drum tracks or different piano
grooves. They will listen to the loop once to familiarize themselves with the track, and then will be
provided the Solo Board. The board is pre-programmed to play the notes of a C Minor Pentatonic scale,
which is the same key of the track they have selected. Holding one hand on earth, or the middle of the
board, they will then be able to touch the other segments of the board to speak the notes of the scale.
In doing so, they will learn the form of differing kinds of background music, and how what they play
interacts with those forms (12 Bar Blues, etc). Our goal is that through the assessment questions we can
teach them to develop solos in a more creative way, and to develop their own musical vocabulary. No
solo is wrong, but there are ways to make your solo more cohesive and true to what you want to say.
They will also be given literature to better explain the forms they experimented with. This will have a
link to another site or sites to learn more or practice with.

Kraus, N., Hornickel, J., Strait, D., Slater, J., & Thompson, E. (2014). Engagement in community music classes sparks
neuroplasticity and language development in children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1403rd ser.,
1-3. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01403
Technologies Used:
1. DAW (SoundTrap): To create/edit a backing track or loop that our users can interact with. This
will provide a source for communication between us and our users.
2. Makey-Makey: To create a low-barrier controller that our users can operate in order to
participate in our engagement experience. This will serve as an instrument that users may
interact with in order to create improvised solos.
3. Laptops: Two laptops will be used; one to display and facilitate the coding in our controller for
the users to view and operate, and one to play the loop or backing track that we will operate to
communicate with our user.
4. Speaker: To provide a clear source of sound for our users to both hear themselves, as well as the
backing track that we will play for them.

Learning Goals:
1. To teach early improvisational techniques through use of a low barrier controller.
2. To teach users to develop their own musical vocabulary and language through constructive
limitations.
3. To develop a familiarity and ear for different styles of music with different cultural backgrounds.

Post Experience Survey https://goo.gl/S6G6Jr Jay Fenner and Tim DeSimone