Electric Musical Instruments using Mat Switches

Takuya Niikawa, Ph.D. - taku@isc.osakac.ac.jp
Dept. of Biomed. Eng., Osaka Electro-Commun. Univ.
1130-70 Kiyotaki Shijo-Nawate, Osaka 575-0063, Japan

Ryosuke Kawachi
Kotaro Minato, Ph.D.
Nara Inst. of Sci. and Technol., Nara 630-0192, Japan

Tatsuo Yoshihara
Naoya Terayama
Osaka Electro-Commun. Univ., Osaka 575-0063, Japan

Popular version of paper 2aED20
Presented Wednesday morning, 29 November, 2006
4th ASA/ASJ Joint Meeting, Honolulu, HI

Singing and playing instruments have been actively incorporated into music education for a long time. Their great benefit has been recognized, and they have been proposed as having the potential to help treat psychosomatic disorders. Music therapy has been actively applied to improve quality of life.

However, in cases with severe expression impairment and physical dysfunctions, these intensive music activities are difficult to carry out. In this study, we constructed an MIDI controller operated by depressing a mat switch with an electric wheelchair. We here propose a new method for music education and therapy with the system.

This system is comprised of a mat switch 500 x 700 mm in size with a 100 N switching load, an A/D converter, a PC, and a MIDI device. Signal output from the mat switch is converted to various MIDI signals by the PC and transferred to the MIDI device. Users are able to operate all musical functions, such as volume and musical notes, through MIDI signals by depressing 10 mat switches.

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the developed MIDI controller.
When depressing the mat switches with a four-wheel electric wheelchair, the setting of the front wheel may be reset by contact of the rear wheel with the mat. In this system, the response of the mat switches can be delayed according to the speed of the wheelchair to prevent unintended switching by the user. In this study, it was confirmed that the sound, volume, and notes of songs, as well as musical scales were controllable by users in a wheelchair. Furthermore, since healthy subjects can play a card game like "Concentration" and also use it as a hand bell by stepping on the mat switch with their foot, this system has potential application to music education.

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