Notes2Blocks - narrative and partnership
In spring of 2019, the Chattanooga Public Library was gifted several electronic piano keyboards from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's Department of Performing Arts. MTGIC partnered with the library at that time to pilot a music learning program utilizing methodically hand-drawn, color-coded charts that symbolized music notes in order to create a visual representation allowing children with intellectual or developmental disabilities who would not otherwise be capable of reading music notation to have an opportunity to play a variety of songs. The keyboards received a great deal of use prior to Covid shutdowns, and all participants sent in glowing reviews of the program. The downside of the process was that the charts took many hours to create by hand, so we were not able to respond to requests to add specific pieces of music favored by each child.
Following the successful pilot program, an idea for how to automate the chart output was presented from a long time supporter of MTGIC, Dr. Andy Novobilski. He suggested that the chart designs could easily be created by a computer program to automate the process, and this would replace the process of having to create them by hand. The output would not only be neater but would also ensure that the methodology could become much more widely available to the library audience as well as many other populations in other areas of the world who would benefit from playing music but were unable to read a traditional music score. Dr. Novobilski created a Java-based computer model to read in an .xml file, interpret it, and then output some basic information about the musical content. This proof of concept was all that was needed to move forward with creating a polished product.
The next step on continuing this process was to secure grant funding to hire a professional IT developer, and Chattanooga's UNFoundation graciously funded MTGIC's grant request for the project. Riley Shipley then did an excellent job of completing Dr. Novobilski's design idea with full analysis, coding, and implentation to create the beautiful charts that are now available for viewing and downloading.
