Abstract:

In Italy, the study of music in the first cycle school, is regulated by the "National guidelines for the curriculum of infant schools and the first cycle of education", a document drafted by the Ministry of Education that lists the goals for the development of competencies and learning objectives for each discipline.

According to this guideline, some of the basic concepts of foundations of music: rhythm, melody, and harmony can be studied and understood since the first cycle of education. More recently, the Legislative Decree of 13 April, 2017 no. 60, "Regulations on the promotion of humanistic culture, on the enhancement of cultural heritage and productions, and on the support of creativity”11, introduced the "Themes of creativity" as fundamental components of school knowledge, of the wealth of intellectual knowledge of every human being, and therefore of the curriculum itself. In this paper we are going to describe the ideation and realisation of MusicBlocks: a device patented by the research group, which is particularly easy to use and allows students to create their own music, without necessarily knowing how to play an instrument.

Students will have a set of Lego bricks of different colors and sizes (1/4, 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4) and a 16x16-pin Lego plate. On the y-axis the pitches (16 pitches considering the semi-tone) that vary gradually from C at the lowest point of the diagram to D#, of the next octave at the highest point are represented, while the x-axis represents the time on which the notes unfold, expressed as 4 bars of 4/4 each.

The bricks once placed at a certain height and position in the plate take on the value of musical notes that are assigned a certain pitch and duration.

Once students have prepared their plate, they can insert it into the MusicBlock, which, equipped with a computer vision system with two cameras, will recognise and read the notes on the plate and play them back in a loop melody. The recognition, reading and playback process is quite complex and requires image segmentation and image recognition analysis.

The added value of this tool, which is still being tested in a school, lies both in the variety of activities that can be carried out and in the possibility of replaying what is produced: so the teacher can use it for basic exercises to educate students in rhythm, harmony and melody, or in more complex activities such as a real musical dictation which engages students in placing the bricks on teacher input or listening to a song and ends with listening to own works, in the search for errors or improvement.

Keywords:

Music learning, technological device, innovative methodologies.