From September 2024, the reorganised 43 Hub Lead Organisations (HLOs), announced by Arts Council England earlier this year, will get £25m to spend on new musical instruments, equipment and technology (hardware and software). One particularly important focus within this has rightly been placed on the inclusion of instruments specifically designed for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Here at UCan Play, a specialist music education sales company, we have a long-standing commitment to these instruments and sell them regularly to schools, hubs and other educational organisations. Over the past 18 months, we have been working with the Technology in Music Education UK charity (TiME) to curate a collection of these inclusive and adaptive musical instruments. We have also been sorting through the considerable difficulties in importing many of these instruments into the UK. A link to the full collection of the TiME-approved adaptive instruments can be found at the end of this article.
In the forthcoming Capital Grant round, we have also made a charitable commitment to support TiME by sharing the small profits on the sale of these instruments with them on an equal basis. Restore the Music UK and TiME will receive 50% of any UCan Play profits to support their work helping schools in the most challenging parts of the UK. In this way, the Grant funding will stretch even further to support music education (aligned with our not-for-profit status as a company).
In this article I will consider a couple of these instruments in detail, before providing a brief overview of the remainder of the collection.
Artiphon instruments
Artiphon launched the Orba back in 2020, updating it to the Orba 2 two years later. Their latest instrument, the Chorda, is pretty much a flattened, elongated enhanced Orba. These instruments can be used as drum, bass, chord and lead synth. They also provide looping and sampling features and can be used as a MIDI controller.
The Chorda runs off a rechargeable battery via a standard USB (A) to USB-C, giving you about five hours of power. The 3W built-in speaker is fine, or you can put it through bigger speakers via the headphone socket. The 12 touch-sensitive keys (or frets/pads) each has a different sound or note/chord, and the instrument can also be played using different gestures, such as moving it around or even strumming one specific key. There are over 100 different sounds, and it connects to the Artiphon Connect companion app. This means you can add even more sounds including Hip-Hop, EDM, rock and orchestral instruments such as strings and brass. These instruments are excellent in a SEND environment, and good to use in conjunction with a separate loop station (e.g. Boss RC-505) that allows students to create compositions from a basic drum-beat.
The Arcana Strum
This is an instrument created in 2015 to emulate the experience of playing a guitar. Haim from the Arcana Instruments team in Tel Aviv explains: ‘The Arcana story began when a family of a young girl with motor disabilities came to us with a very special request. They asked that we help make her dream come true – that is, to share the stage with her friends and make music together with them.’
Matei, a student who uses the Arcana Strum, alongside his mum, Laura / Courtesy TiME/NMPAT
The Arcana Strum was created by a team of musicians, engineers and designers who joined forces to help support this young girl, as well as opening access to music-making for people across the world. Following rigorous testing, piloting and support from musicians (disabled and non-disabled), the Arcana Strum was created to provide a fully accessible instrument.
Recently the Arcana Strum was the centre of a case study done by Rebecca Price from the Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts Trust. Her report is fascinating and focuses on the musical experiences of one student, called Matei. The Arcana Strum was used in individual sessions with Matei and also as part of the hub’s inclusive ensemble. The work he did was contextualised within the Trinity College ‘Sounds of Intent’ qualification framework, and Price says Matei’s work was around Level 3 or 4. More generally, when asked about the benefits of the Arcana Strum, she said:
‘Since using the Strum, Matei has made clear progress … It has given him control over sounds in a different way to other instruments, to start to understand and use chords. Matei has been able to show me that he knows when to change chord within a song. It has also opened up the opportunity for him to play a more complex instrument within the Inclusive Ensemble, and to work with other practitioners to help him do so. It also has the potential for Matei to use in a performance, and this is something he very much enjoys doing. One last but very important fact: Matei has enjoyed the sessions of music-making using the Strum, he has put in a lot of energy and focus when using it, and over the course of the sessions he has progressed in his ability to control the sound he makes using the Strum.’
Other instruments
Some of the other instruments that feature within the TiME/UCan Play collection are:
- Digit Music’s CMPSR, a joystick MIDI-controller instrument that can be used alongside their Arrow Note music notation system.
- The Cosmo Switch, a collection of colour-changing switches (think of them as large buttons), that can be used for a whole host of music and other curriculum-related activities.
- Dubler 2, a piece of software that allows you to control all MIDI-controllable features of a DAW with just your voice.
- Finger Drum Pads, by Yamaha, which allow you to play many different drum-kits with just your fingers.
- ODD Ball, a very versatile unbreakable silicon MIDI instrument, about the size of a tennis ball. It works by a Bluetooth link to a mobile phone app. The app has hundreds of different sounds that are activated when the ball is bounced, thrown, tapped, twisted, spun or shaken. You can also sample sounds into the app.
- Soundbeam 6, a ‘touch-free’ music technology instrument that turns physical movement into sounds and music. The Soundbeam has been a mainstay instrument for SEND for over 35 years.
- Stylophone BEAT and Theremin. This is a small, easy to use, battery operated table-top drum and bass machine, and a theremin, with record and loop functionality.
- The ARTinoise re.corder is a brand-new take on the classic soprano recorder. With its built-in wireless connectivity, digital sensor platform, and interactive app, it takes the traditional recorder into the future, providing access to a world of previously unimagined sounds and expressive functionalities. You can practise with headphones and join friends for online sessions with your mobile device.
This is an ongoing collection. If you have a favourite inclusive or adaptive instrument that you would like to see added to this collection, please let us know. We are also always interested in your stories about how these instruments have been used in classroom settings.
What are the next steps in this initiative? By the time you read this, the companies selected by the DfE for the Capital Grant procurement will have been chosen. Lead hubs will be able to start their purchasing from September 2024, and the window is open for a two-year period.
If you work for a school, it is really important that you start engaging with your new Hub Lead Organisation. You should be letting them know what you need and what you will be doing with it. The fund is there to provide you, as schools, with instruments – not just the HLOs. HLOs should be facilitating this link as part of their work supporting you as schools. Don’t miss out!
If you have any questions about UCan Play’s work, contact Dr Jonathan Savage at jonathan@ucanplay.org.uk
