piARno - An Augmented Reality Piano Tutor

Abstract

Music is an important way for humans to express themselves, unite, relate, and gain enjoyment. While many people desire for themselves, or their loved ones, to achieve some form of musical prowess, the discipline remains encumbered by low motivation and high dropout rates. This is despite long established trends between exposure to learning playing an instrument and enhanced cognitive development. Previous research suggests that one factor associated with motivation loss might be the lack of perceived progress during the early stages of music instruction. In this paper we develop a novel Augmented Reality piano tutor with the primary goal of increasing the effectiveness of self-practice for beginners. Our solution is based on the principle of constant feedback and reducing the level of indirection between instrument, instructions, and feedback, and enables users to learn to read and understand piano sheet music quickly without requiring a private instructor, while maintaining compatibility with the traditional learning process. An evaluation of our solution with a user study containing 22 participants showed that our tool significantly improved motivation and the ability to read piano sheet music.