Through my research I have found a previous study carried out which used the Wii as a musical instrument within music therapy.
The study was carried out in 2009 and include several case studies of using it within practice.
They used the Wii remote with a group of children with behavioural disorders to allow for mediation, this is:
“Mediation [10] is the psychological process in which patients undertaking psychodynamic therapy take advantage of an object they can link, although sometimes not in a clear and direct way, to their personal histories to express meaningful behaviors or feelings. Here, for instance, a patient might find in the “roundness” of a drum sound an echo of a former situation he or she experienced and that lead to his or her current traumatic condition.”
This study shows a great insight into how the Wii could be used within music therapy and how there is a need for such a creation. From this study we can see that:
- Provides the client with an instrument which they can relate to culturally
- The movement which the Wii promotes can aid rehabilitation in a way which a client may relate with fun more then going on an exercise bike for example.
- Provides focus and motivation
- Can be integrated well into music therapy protocol.
- Reduces cost, training etc.
I have looked further into this project as obviously if it went ahead and was developed further then my project may not be needed however after 2009 I can not find any further development of the project and I can not find the software used anywhere. Suggesting there is still a need for this software.
This research has been very useful and I can use it in my research. It shows there is a need for this software.
“Even though traditional musical instruments have proven to be conducive to effective mediation in various settings [18], we report in this paper that more advanced technologies can not only be effective for mediation purposes, in particular for children and young adults who are more familiar with technological devices, but also provide significant advantages to the music therapy process.”
“These games (Guitar Hero and Rock Band) put emphasis not on gameplay but on making the player feel like s/he is a true virtuoso rock musician. Their enormous commercial success clearly shows that an intricate gameplay is not necessary to motivate players, since things such as hard challenge and strong evocative power can be sufficient.”
“Kahol and Smith [16] study the benefits for surgeons of playing Marble Mania on the Wii. The fine motor skills that are put to the test in the game (Wiimote pitch and roll control) are, according to them, very similar to those required to perform clean and efficient surgery. Results suggest that surgeons playing one hour of Marble Mania a day perform 48% better than those who do not. This means that the Wiimote is sensitive and precise enough to qualify as a complement to, or maybe even as a replacement of, medical simulators which often cost tens of thousands of dollars.”
“As with WiiFit, rehabilitation becomes fun and patients therefore commit to the treatment more willingly.”
“The gameplay in itself is absolutely standard and only serves as a catalyst.”
“The precise tracking of a patient’s progress via video game scores becomes possible and can serve both as a motivation for the patient and as an assessment tool for therapists.”
“The first validation test was a success [6]. It proved the soundness of our first, proof-of-concept design and the feasibility of our approach from a technical and logistic point of view while giving very encouraging signs on the motivational and psychodynamic aspects.”
“High sensitivity and large dynamic range were favored at first to enhance expressiveness and encourage the children to focus on fine motor control. However it clearly appeared during the first test that the children would not make use of such precision, and that we could trade some expressiveness for easier control.”
“We therefore have shown that the system is simple and reliable enough to be used in a real clinical setting. “
“We have also shown that our system can almost seamlessly integrate into the usual music therapy protocol. By using only hardware and software intended for the public at large, we managed to reduce costs, complexity of configuration and most importantly time consumption during the session. ”
“Even though they were always offered the possibility to play with a real instrument, only one of them chose to play the harmonica for one session, to set himself apart as he usually does. Otherwise they all consistently chose the Wiimotes over their former instruments. We can see two major forces at play here: the cultural aspect of video games and musicianship and the increase in self-esteem due to the children’s involvement in the design process.”
“Our system also combines the aura of video games with the very positive social image of musicianship. The children for example said things like “Now I’m a real musician !”.”
“It encourages the children to formulate projects and plan ahead.”
“However our experiments show that, thanks to their increased motivation, they are more able to focus and to control this excitement properly.”
“The biggest a priori objection from the music therapy community was that, due to their lack of physical presence (in terms of size, texture, vibration etc.), Wiimotes would not trigger any useful emotional response. However, this is clearly not true: our system does indeed retain enough presence to trigger meaningful elaboration and symbolization in our patient population. Moreover, its increased abstraction turns into an advantage over real instruments because it allows much more freedom of motion.”
“With our system, the children get access to sounds they could never produce with real instruments, which would either be too big, too expensive or too hard to play; this is very interesting from a psychodynamic point of view.”
(Designing Wiimprovisation for Mediation in Group Music Therapy with
Children Suffering from Behavioral Disorders.
Samuel Benveniste, Pierre Jouvelot, Edith Lecourt & Renaud Michel. 2009)
A Soundscape Of My Life 