Dalcroze meets technology: integrating music, movement and visuals with the Music Paint Machine

ABSTRACT

New interactive music educational technologies are often seen as a ‘force of change’, introducing new approaches that address the shortcomings (e.g. score-based, teacher-centred and disembodied) of the so-called traditional teaching approaches. And yet, despite the growing belief in their educational potential, these new technologies have been problematised with regard to their design, reception, implementation and evaluation. A possible way to optimise the realisation of the educational potential of interactive music educational technologies is to connect their use to music educational approaches that stood the test of time and as such may inspire technologies to become a bridge between tradition and innovation. This article describes an educational technology (the Music Paint Machine) that integrates the creative use of movement and visualisation to support instrumental music teaching and learning. Next, it connects this application to such an established music educational method, the Dalcroze approach. Through the lens of a set of interconnected aspects, it is shown how the Music Paint Machine’s conceptual design aligns to the underlying principles of this approach. In this way, it is argued that integrating Dalcroze-inspired practices is a plausible way of realising the didactic potential of the system. An appendix with example exercises is provided.

KEYWORDS:

• Instrumental music education
• interactive technologies
• Dalcroze approach

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted in the framework of the EmcoMetecca project, granted by Ghent University (Methusalem-BOF council) to Prof. Dr. Marc Leman.

The author wishes to thank Carine De Vinck and her team of Dalcroze teachers at the Institut Dalcroze Belgique, and Eva Wedin, Lina Van Dooren, Emma Shubin and Michael Joviala for the inspiring collaboration and conversations. Also many thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and critical assessment of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Luc Nijs holds MA’s in Music Performance and Philosophy, and a PhD in Musicology. He is currently postdoctoral researcher at IPEM (Ghent University, BE) and lecturer in Music Educational Technology at the Royal Conservatory The Hague (NL) and Luca School of Arts Leuven (BE). His research focuses on the musician-instrument relationship, on the role of body movement in the instrumental learning process and on the role of technology in provoking an embodied approach to instrumental music education. His PhD project received the EAPRIL Best Research and Practice Project Award 2012.

ORCID

Luc Nijs http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7054-2660