This is the goal of a new instrument: the EyeHarp, developed by Zacharias Vamvakousis and Rafael Ramírez, members of the Music Technology research Group which, after successfully completing a pilot phase, could be applied to people with disabilities.

Zacharias Vamvakousis and Rafael Ramirez, members of Music Technology Group (MTG) of the Department of Information and Communication Technologies  (DTIC), present and evaluate a new interface: the EyeHarp, a digital musical instrument controlled using the eyes in which interaction and expressiveness with the instrument are performed by the user by selecting the chords and arpeggios, the melody and the volume just by using their eyes.

Previous studies have shown that, beyond the acquisition of purely artistic skills, learning music or playing an instrument is highly beneficial. Both in children and in adults, learning music has been associated with structural changes in the brain. For example, musicians have some larger brain regions that are related to sight and hearing; more grey matter in Broca’s area, a part of the brain related with language; the nerve fibres connecting the two cerebral hemispheres are longer, etc., compared to people who are not musicians. It has also been shown that in children music increases non-verbal memory, their intelligence quotient, arithmetic understanding and spatial conception.

People with motor disabilities encounter difficulties when it comes to learning to play a musical instrument. Hence, they cannot benefit from the advantages of music. Although adapted digital music interfaces (ADMI) have been developed, this alternative is insufficient for people with severe motor disability with total muscle paralysis. For these people, a good alternative could be eye-tracking technology.

A promising pilot test

So far, the researchers Vamvakousis and Ramírez have conducted a pilot phase for the quantitative and qualitative study of the usability of the EyeHarp from the player’s perspective. This experiment was carried out on 8 people without any type of disability and with musical knowledge. A second experiment has enabled studying the interface from the perspective of the public. This experiment involved 31 people who acted as an audience and appraised two concerts: one performance for just the EyeHarp and the other for the EyeHarp, two guitars and a flute.

As Vamvakousis and Ramírez point out in a study published in Frontiers in Psychology, “the results obtained indicate that, just like traditional musical instruments, the digital musical instrument that we have developed has a very steep learning curve and allows producing expressive performances, both from the point of view of the player and the audience”. These results open the way for the EyeHarp to be available to the disabled and aid with learning and performing music, in turn enjoying the cognitive advantages that, according to several prior studies, are provided by this activity.

This project has received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme as well as the Spanish TIN projects (IT for the Information Society) within the TIMUL project.