See The New Orange Music Education MUSICBOARD®
The guitar amp manufacturer Orange has a new guitar teaching product. The MUSICBOARD® is set to redefine the way in which music theory is taught. Working with music teaching professionals all over Europe, Orange are proud to launch the world’s first truly interactive music theory teaching tool, using innovative, patented technology to make teaching and learning music kinesthetic and more enjoyable.
The Orange MUSICBOARD® is a fully interactive educational tool aimed at inspiring a new generation of students to excel in music theory lessons. It enables them to engage with harmonies, notes, rhythms and chords in both visual and audible ways and using Orange’s note detecting cordless wands, both students and teachers can play notes together and discover what they should sound like improving aural awareness.
The simple to install wall-mounted, height adjustable board features a built-in 61 note polyphonic weighted keyboard so hand positions and note pitches can be demonstrated to a whole class with ease. The Board enables teachers to demonstrate key signatures audibly, helping students to work out scales in both major and minor keys. Students can practise transposing music across three staves as the board has the ability to change clefs. Chordal work, harmonies, natural minor scales and metronome functionality are all features that can be demonstrated and used by the students in real time. A large digital built-in tuner for voice and acoustic instruments has been added while guitarists can also plug directly into the board to tune and play through the built-in stereo speakers. There is also Bluetooth connectivity allowing music to be played through the board for class interaction. Orange Amplification will be showing the MUSICBOARD® and other new products at their Booth 4890 Hall C at Winter NAMM 2015.
What is it?
The Orange Musicboard is a low cost, low energy consuming, interactive music theory board. It has been built to make music theory a priority for students in a fun, interactive, yet educationally rigorous way. It can be used in group classes or on an individual basis and is aimed at students learning a musical instrument or curriculum based music. It is the 1st fully interactive Musicboard dedicated to music theory and work for schools that are serious about Music.
Why?
Music theory is the most challenging aspect of music education for teachers as theory knowledge is not remembered by students as much as the instrumental side of music. Instrumental learning is Kinaesthetic and it is this approach to theory that led to the Musicboard being made. Board pens and cordless ‘magic’ wands are used by both the teacher and the students to create notes and learn how they sound. This has proved far more productive in helping a student retain pitch and rhythm recognition over methods that just allow them to write music electronically and have it played back to them. It has also been identified that teachers find it difficult to help students retain knowledge about key signatures and how minor keys work as it can seem alien to non instrumentalists. The Musicboard enables effortless key changes and naturally shows the progression to relative minors from the Major keys allowing students to hear the relevance between the two. Natural minors are taught first and so melodic and harmonic scale theory is much easier to digest.
Even if a student is not able to play an instrument, they are able to demonstrate their understanding of how melodies, along with their rhythms, should sound. Using the wand to create each note’s voice in time with a backing track (which is blue-toothed through to the musicboard from a teachers phone) can help students realise the fun of understanding music theory and how it can help them create music.
How?
The Musicboard is very simple and easy to use and does not rely on any external computer programs or hardware which can take up teaching time. There is an instructional app for cover teachers who need to know in seconds, how to use a specific function.
The board features a built in piano keyboard so hand positions and musical demonstrations can be performed to the entire class. 4 major instrument sounds are offered for young students to identify.
Key signatures and working out scales are made easy to demonstrate and explain with in built technology from Intel allowing teachers to demonstrate audibly, key changes and differences between Major and Minor keys.
Other features include easy clef changes for harmony and group work, an in built metronome and a large tuner for singers and instrumentalists to check their tuning to. Guitarists can plug into the board using the in built speakers and overdrive while students and teachers bringing in music to play and learn can link up to the boards Bluetooth via there phone or wireless device.
Patented technology in this board means there is no need for buttons and commands are instead activated by wireless wands. These wands can be used by students and teachers to play notes together and discover what they should sound like in relation to each other helping to improve their aural awareness.
Tried and Tested?
The Musicboard had been put through its paces and constantly tweaked by over 40 music teachers for 4 years not just in the UK but internationally. The Musicboards were placed in dedicated music schools where music was taught through instrumental lessons or through G.C.S.E and A level music classes of the OCR and ED EXCEL examination boards, some schools having up to 11 boards at a time.