Making Music Feel Good: A Tablet, a Tabletop and a £20 speaker

May I share an excellent idea with you? It came from trying to make music accessible for children in challenging circumstances and of course, making music more accessible for anyone is a good idea.

This simple idea uses a vibrating speaker to make a large surface into a loudspeaker. Sitting or lying on that large surface means that you feel the music as well as hear it. Everyone I’ve tried this with agrees that music feels as good as it sounds.

The idea came from use of Resonance boards (sometimes called “Clonker boards”) in some of the settings I visit. With these, a child lies on the board and the practitioner strokes, pats or scratches the board or plays an instrument on it to allow the child to feel the vibrations made. This is desirable for children with sensory impairments.

In an attempt to extend that experience I placed a clever thing called a resonance (vibrating) speaker on a board. This fist-sized cylindrical bit of kit has a “foot” which vibrates when music is played through it. The foot vibrates the surface it stands on and converts that biscuit tin or tabletop surface into a speaker. When I was in a setting with no resonance board (they are very expensive) I took the legs off a table and spread a blanket on top. That worked well too.

The speaker I have (Adin B1BT) connects via Bluetooth so there are no wires in the way. I can play from my iPod, the setting’s iPad or my android tablet which is really useful for playing MP3s, for when there's no WiFi and for when I can't face iTunes. Alternatively the speaker can be connected with a wire that comes with the speaker to a CD player.

So far, this has worked very well in making the musical experience of the sensory-impaired child into a social experience as everyone present can share their choice of music and it sounds great. A father played Adele’s “Someone like you” through the speaker from his own phone for his globally delayed son who lay still, transfixed by the vibration whilst staring at his father’s face. The father sang quietly along. That was a highly emotional experience for the small group present and clearly a “way in” for the father to share his music with his son.

I have been co-creating music for use through resonance boards and other surfaces and I am indebted to the SEN practitioners in Gloucestershire who have been trying out the tracks and feeding back their experiences as part of GlosMM's "Moving on Music, Music with ESMOGs" Youth Music funded project. The tracks are designed to entice practitioners and parents into using touch and manipulation with children with sensory deprivation or developmental delay. The combination of enjoyable music for the practitioner, vibrations via the board, the communicative, meaningful touch of the practitioner appears to make the experience deeply moving for all.

I hope others will give the speaker a try - they are about £20 online.