Citizensheep » Musical Instruments Museum hits the right note

1 October, 2007

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Musical Instruments Museum hits the right note

(Sorry about the poor pun.) Just a note to enthuse about the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels, which I recently visited with my friend over at DevCreek. It is, to my mind, a good example of technology used well, rather than for the sake of it.

In the respect that it contains lots of cabinets displaying old musical instruments it is pretty conventional, almost archaic. The twist, though, is simple and effective: visitors are each given a set of wireless headphones, through which is played music specific to the instruments currently under perusal (achieved, I believe, with infrared sensors).

The experience was totally engaging, despite – maybe even augmented by – the various quirks. For instance, the sound would suddenly cut out when out of range and replaced with a loud hissing noise, and sometimes finding the best reception would require a degree of comical contortion.

There were also some very promising computer-based activities (eg ‘listen to this sound and create an instrument to replicate it’), though sadly they suffered from overuse and responded badly to user interaction.

It was still great though. The choice of and variation in sound clips was good, and the instruments were laid out well and the positions of items within the cabinets were marked clearly with a simple graphic.

I would have liked to have been told what the pieces of music were, who was playing them and how they related to the instruments (eg was it the actual instrument being played or something similar?). We didn’t finish the museum though – we ran out of time – so it may well be that the museum shop contains the answers.

I loved it, and shall be going back.