Reinventing the methodology of initiation to the trumpet's teaching: proposal of an ICT based platform

Abstract

Learning music and all its aspects is not easier. It requires from students’ lots of effort and dedication to achieve satisfactory results. Due to the complexity of this learning process many students tend to give up, which motivates to create new strategies and methods that make all this learning friendlier. Trumpet is an enjoyable instrument to play but, due to some of its special challenges (embouchure, breathing and tongue articulation and fingers), it generally requires more time for younger students to achieve the same level of performance as younger students of other instruments. Related to fingering, the trumpet play is limited to only three pistons and it is expected the student to be able to memorize all the various notes to the fingerings. The project described in this work aims to create a wireless console and an educational video game to reinvent the methodology of initiation to the trumpet’s teaching where the console simulates the typical three-piston trumpet block, and thereby simulates the instrument’s behaviour. The console communicates with a device that integrates the educational video, so the student could correlate the musical notes shown in the game with the relative position of the trumpet pistons. In this context, the present work proposes an ICT (Information and Communications Technology) based platform to make trumpet teaching, both in musical theory and practice of the instrument, more propitious and motivating. The evaluation of the first version of the prototyped platform was made qualitatively using questionnaires, interviews and performative observation of music teachers. The preliminary results are encouraging revealing that teachers consider the proposed platform to be an innovative approach to the initiation to the trumpet’s teaching, improving the commitment and motivation of students.