“The smile is the last thing to go”, was a comment from the Motor Neurone Disease Association, so it important that a smile powered musical instrument should exist. This instrument has been co-designed and developed with the Disabled community to be one of, if not the most, inclusive musical instruments.
It is fun and easy to create music by yourself or with your friends, even if you have a disability or do not have any musical ability.
We witnessed first hand a young girl with very limited motion below the neck play music with her family for the first time and the profound effect it had on them.
Each visitor was gifted the synthesizer as an online application to take home and play for free, and as the source code is also offered as open-source, along with the research behind it, others can build upon these foundations to build new musical instruments of their own.
Drake Music – specialists in accessible audio technology – both provided a grant to help fund development, and featured at the event. Through their DMLab program the instrument has been tested with the Disabled community and used with a broad cross-section of people with varying abilities.
By showing off this inclusive musical instrument in a public setting we can see how people use it and what effects it has on groups and individuals, especially those who have not used musical instruments before, and those who really want to but can’t.
Smiling is contagious which makes this multiplayer mixed reality synthesizer extra fun!