Choose your instrument on your smartphone
Getting to know instruments at home, not just on the spot: that's what the "Instrumentenparcours fürs Smartphone" ("open doors for the smartphone") app from the Oberer Sempachersee music school makes possible. The app won 1st prize and the special coronavirus prize in the ASEM best practice competition.
Which instrument should I choose? Every spring, music schools all over Switzerland present their offerings. This is a very important moment, not only for the music schools themselves, but for all interested parties. The smartphone app developed by the Oberer Sempachersee music school is a welcome addition to the on-site offerings.
The game, currently available for smartphones, but soon also for tablets, is free of charge and suitable for children from 1re and 2e grade. It starts in the "music house", which comprises several rooms where instruments are presented, always with playful elements such as audio examples, rebus or puzzles. The icing on the cake: music schools can adapt this house to their own offer, integrating their own logo and adding links to instrumental videos of their teachers. In this way, future students can take their time and have a good basis for choosing their instrument at home and then enrolling, even directly. To use the "Instrumentenparcours fürs Smartphone" application, the music schools concerned pay a one-off start-up fee, followed by an annual subscription. Currently, 21 music schools in various cantons of German-speaking Switzerland are participating in the project. In the medium term, translation into French and Italian is planned. "We're only at the beginning," says the director of the Oberer Sempachersee music school Manuel Imhof, who initiated the project. "The possibilities are enormous."
