When children reflect on their own playing style: experiments with continuator and children

The Continuator project concerns the study of interactive musicalsystems that are able to learn musical styles. The Continuatorsystem was developed with the primary goal of designing new musicalinstruments in the context of improvised music. The strongsubjective impressions created with the use of the system led us toconsider its use in a pedagogical context. This article describesexperiments conducted with the system and 3- to 5-year-oldchildren. We highlight several dimensions of the study pertainingto music education, including attention span, spontaneousdevelopment of playing modes, and capacity to listen analytically.We describe very encouraging preliminary results and stress theimportance of using reflective interactive systems for triggeringmusical interest in children and creating stimulating,nonsupervised music learning environments. We conclude by settingup our research in the context of the theory of flow as an optimalexperience.