Create Music With Your Eyes WITH THE NEW DIGITAL INSTRUMENT, EYEHARP
The instrument comes with accuracy scores and other gaming metrics to help users perfect their EyeHarp playing skills.
There are a wide variety of instruments available to us, but most require the use of our hands or mouths, so it may seem impossible for someone who is paralyzed to play an instrument. That’s where Zacharias Vamvakousis comes in. Vamvakousis has a Ph.D. in music and expert computer skills. He wanted everyone to have the ability to play music, so he created a new digital instrument called EyeHarp. On EyeHarp, notes appear on screen in a color-coded wheel set to pentatonic or heptatonic scales. These notes are then selected for sonification by the user’s gaze, which allows hundreds of quadriplegics to create music with nothing more than their eyes. To help with those new to EyeHarp, it comes with a visual aid that helps the user direct their gaze to the next correct note. You can also turn this feature off to have a real trial and error session with the instrument.
EyeHarp is currently being used by over 650 people worldwide. Joel Bueno, a 14-year-old Spanish boy with cerebral palsy, is one of the current users. He says, “EyeHarp is a very important instrument for my life because I always wanted to play music. It is an innovative instrument … great and very fresh.” Vamvakousis’ new instrument is allowing people to play music where they would otherwise be unable to, and for many of its users, it has been a life-changing experience. You can sign up for a free trial of EyeHarp on EyeHarp.org, but you will need a Tobii eye tracker in order to use the digital instrument.
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