Harmony has always been considered a difficult matter to learn, also by experienced musicians. The aim of this paper is to present a system designed to provide unskilled users with an indication about the sound of the different harmonic regions and to help them to build a cognitive map of their relationships, linking musical perception to spatial abilities like orientation and wayfinding. The Harmonic Walk is an interactive environment which responds to the user’s position inside a rectangular space. Different chords are proposed to the user depending on her/his position. The user’s task is to find and to recognize them, and, then, to decide how to link the chords producing a convincing harmonic progression. This can be made by choosing a precise path to perform the best satisfying “harmonic walk”, selecting it among various possibilities. From a theoretical point of view the project is inspired to the neo-Riemannian ideas of harmony and parsimonious progressions, which try to give a wider and coherent framework to 19th century harmony and to its representation. The results of our preliminary tests confirm that, in a sample of children from 7 to 11 years old, most of the participants were able to locate the chords and to find some valid path to perform a harmonic progression.

http://speech.di.uoa.gr/ICMC-SMC-2014/images/VOL_2/1778.pdf

The "Harmonic Walk": an Interactive Educational Environment to Discover Musical Chords.

Musical theory about the structure and morphology of Western tonality is quite difficult to teach to young children, due to the relatively complex mathematical concepts behind tonality. Children usually grasp the concepts of musical harmony intuitively through listening to music examples. Placing the 12 notes of the well-tempered scale into a spatial arrangement, in which the proximity of these notes represents their mutual harmonic relationship, would allow to link physical motion through a spatial area with the exploration of music tonality. Music theorists have postulated the Circle of Fifth, the “Spiral Array”, and the “Tonnetz” as paradigms for spatial arrangements of music notes which allow mapping the distance between notes onto their “mutual consonance”. These approaches mostly have been of qualitative nature, leaving the actual numeric parameters of the spatial description undetermined. In this paper, these parameters have been determined, leading to a concrete numerical description of the planar Tonnetz. This allows the design of a physical space in which the music notes are distributed in space according to their musical consonance. Set up in an outdoor area, handheld devices (e.g. PDA) with integrated Global Positioning System can be used to play these notes at their actual physical location. This makes it possible for children to explore this musical space by moving through the real spatial area and experience the relationships of the notes through their proximity. Defining a range for each note as a circular area around each note location, consonant chords can be produced in those areas where those circles overlap. Using this concept, games can be developed in which the listeners have to perform certain tasks related to this musical space. This appears to be a promising approach for the music education of young children who can intuitively learn about music morphology without being explicitly taught about the complex theoretical mathematical background.

/pdf/a-concept-for-exploring-western-music-tonality-in-physical-79byuqgco2.pdf

A Concept for Exploring Western Music Tonality in Physical Space

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A Concept for Exploring Western Music Tonality in Physical Space