Symphony of art and science at Hallé for Youth
07 Mar 2017
Thousands of schoolkids fall under the spell of our Halléoojamaflipaphone
Thousands of local schoolchildren have fallen under the spell of our Halléoojamaflipaphone – a musical instrument invented and built at the University for the city's Hallé orchestra.
Its latest incarnation was on stage with the Hallé performing in the Hallé for Youth concerts, which enthralled a total audience of 8,000 primary school children across the week-long festival.
Designed and built by our apprentices, the Halléoojamaflipaphone is a meeting of engineering and music: a group of mechatronic instruments that play acoustic music, responding in real time to a score coded into a digital format by electrical engineer and PhD student Hassan Hakim Khalili.
Peter Green, Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the Hallé's Education Director Steve Pickett formed the idea as they commuted to work on the train.
The instruments can respond to any score, from Beethoven to hip hop.
They include a V8 engine block whose eight pistons shake eight cans containing different materials to create eight different sounds, built by technical apprentices Jake Cartwright and Jacob Skelly. Meanwhile the snare drum, with its drumsticks hovering over the drum skin from a motor, can play a beat faster than any human.
The Hallé orchestra are now using it in their work with schoolchildren and also dementia sufferers.
Steve explains: “Twenty-thousand kids play with our orchestra every year and another 30,000 take part in the wider Hallé Education programmes. Some of these kids are disengaged, struggling, but we bring them together and they're amazing.
“The Halléoojamaflipaphone could revolutionise our education programmes and possibly others at care homes and prisons, with more instruments being added every year. The impact will be colossal. This is no one-hit wonder.”
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