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TOBA - Enhancing Music Therapy

Degree Project 2021

Even though music might be one of the most popular things in the world, it generally is only consumed and used as entertainment. Only a few people practice active music making but still its power and the effect is felt by most people. In music therapy experts tap into this inherent power of music and creativity to help people who need therapy to deal with different mental and emotional issues and disorders. These people usually are non-musicians and come in contact with active music making for the first time. This project is about enhancing the potential of music therapy by developing a device that specifically caters to the needs and methods used in music therapy.

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Being in close contact with music therapists, I explored and studied the topic in order to get to know the stakeholders, the process and the instruments they use at the moment. After gathering the information needed, I used ideation workshops to generate rough ideas that could be evaluated and developed. Since this topic requires working with intangible aspects like sounds and haptics, I made extensive use of mock-up videos and interactive prototypes that could be shown to experts and evaluated remotely as well
as tested with other students.

The result of this project is a digital instrument that is specifically tailored to the needs of music therapy. It makes it easy for the user to explore and manipulate sounds and improvise while it also facilitates the dialogue between therapist and client.