This week at NAMM, legendary amplifier company introduced a bunch of great new stuff, including a surprise item – the Orange MusicBoard Interactive Whiteboard. Anyone with kids in school knows about electronic whiteboards, which allow you to project interactive content from a computer onto a screen. The MusicBoard seeks to revolutionize how music theory is taught to students!
Growing up in the chalkboard era, I have been thrilled to watch my kids learn using more interactive smartboards, and the thought of applying that technology to music theory is simply awesome. Here are some details from Orange:
The Orange MUSICBOARD® is a fully interactive educational tool aimed at inspiring a new generation of students to excel in music theory lessons. It enables them to engage with harmonies, notes, rhythms and chords in both visual and audible ways and using Orange’s note detecting cordless wands, both students and teachers can play notes together and discover what they should sound like improving aural awareness.
The simple to install wall-mounted, height adjustable board features a built-in 61 note polyphonic weighted keyboard so hand positions and note pitches can be demonstrated to a whole class with ease. The Board enables teachers to demonstrate key signatures audibly, helping students to work out scales in both major and minor keys. Students can practise transposing music across three staves as the board has the ability to change clefs. Chordal work, harmonies, natural minor scales and metronome functionality are all features that can be demonstrated and used by the students in real time. A large digital built-in tuner for voice and acoustic instruments has been added while guitarists can also plug directly into the board to tune and play through the built-in stereo speakers. There is also Bluetooth connectivity allowing music to be played through the board for class interaction.
Here is the video introduction: