Children's Interaction with a Musical Machine

Our project deals with an area still under-studied, that of interactive musical systems, and attempts to understand in what way these systems can affect the learning and the musical creativity of children. We chose to study young children, 3/5 years old, because at this age the problem of the interaction between child and machine takes on a fundamental role in the learning process. An experimental protocol was established to observe selected categories of conducts in children confronting an interactive musical system. Following a preliminary experiment, we used a particular system, the Continuator, able to produce music in the same style as a human playing the keyboard (Pachet 2002). The experiment was carried out with 27 children of 3/5 years, in an Italian kindergarten. We used a Roland ED PC-180A keyboard as the interface for the Continuator. Three sessions were held once a day for 3 consecutive days. In every session the children were asked to play in 4 different ways: just with the keyboard, with the keyboard and the Continuator, with another child, and both with another child and the Continuator. The tasks were given in random order. All the sessions were recorded on video. We also recorded the music played by the children and the Continuator. The data analysed until now show a certain number of interesting results, relating to the development of musical style interaction between children and system. In this paper, we will provide some general comments about the children’s conducts, both musical and interactive, and give a qualitative analysis of 2 case-studies.