Drake Music are a national charity organisation who for over 20 years have pioneered the development of accessible music technology in teaching, learning, writing, and playing music.
We had a field trip to their office in Rich Mix where Tim Yates, the head of research and innovation showed, and demonstrated to us some accessible instruments in person. These included the soundbeam, OrchLab touch instruments, the Kellycaster, artiphon, iPad apps…
We then had a go on them ourselves, I particularly liked artiphons rubber fretboard-like midi controller and the orchlab touch trombone. What struck me was the idea that the disabled person is able to play the same instrument as an able bodied person together as equals. This collaborative, workshop based use was something I wanted to take into my project. The simplicity also stood out to me, just by touching any part of the trombone body a note would play which you could then alter the pitch by moving the slide. Although it loses the acoustic sound of a trombone it gains in its tactile mirroring of the slide on a trombone.
I though the antiphon was just as useful to able bodied musicians as it would allow you to strum like a guitar to trigger any midi controlled sound which could be used to produce some interesting sounds both in recording and live contexts.