Muscle Synergies Learning with Electrical Muscle Stimulation for Playing the Piano

ABSTRACT When playing scales on the piano, playing all notes evenly is a basic technique to improve the quality of music. However, it is difficult for beginners to do this because they need to achieve appropriate muscle synergies of the forearm and shoulder muscles, i.e., pressing keys as well as sliding their hands sideways. In this paper, we propose a system using electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) to teach beginners how to improve their muscle synergies while playing scales. We focus on “thumb-under” method and assist with it by applying EMS to the deltoid muscle. We conducted a user study to investigate whether our EMS-based system can help beginners learn new muscle synergies in playing ascending scales. We divided the participants into two groups: an experimental group that practiced with EMS and a control group that practiced without EMS. The results showed that practicing with EMS was more effective in improving the evenness of scales than without EMS and that the muscle synergies changed after practicing.