Throughout my semester in the Digital Making Seminar, I have been thinking about 3D printing and music. I am a musician myself, as are my parents and many others in my extended family. I was fortunate enough to attend a school and come from a family where instruments were provided to me from the very beginning. As I progressed both in age and ability, the quality of my instruments did as well. I am a percussionist, so not only did my instrument need upgrading as my skills grew (like any musician), but all of my instruments needed upgrading. My school had most of the percussion instruments called “toys” and other small instruments I could practice on, but I owned my own marimba, drum set, and concert drums. For any instrumentalist (and a percussionist in particular), the cost of upgrading instruments (or even buying them in the first place) is staggering.
I’d seen plastic trombones and trumpets at music conventions before – I knew that brass wasn’t the only material that could be used to make those instruments. I’d seen cheaper, plastic tambourines, flutes, and other instruments before, so I knew it could be done. But this class got me thinking – could they be 3D printed? And furthermore, could this be a way to introduce entry-level instruments to beginning musicians from underserved schools?
My mom used to do instrument contracting with Quilan & Fabish, a music company that sells and rents out instruments primarily to schools in the Midwest. To rent the lowest grade, entry-level trombone, the cost is nearly $40 per month. If a student is in school for 7 months, that’s $280. If they practice over the summer, that’s $480. Many underserved schools don’t have the budget to buy instruments outright and rent them to students cost-free as my middle and high schools did. These underserved schools often have to fight for the budget for a music program, so you can imagine how absurd a teacher requesting 12 trombones plus any other instruments for the students might be. Additionally, many of the parents of these children in underserved schools do not have the money to rent or purchase the instruments. My mom recounts visiting several underfunded schools in the Chicago Public School system with Quinlan & Fabish and watching parents take their children home empty-handed from the instrument try-out session because they could not afford the instrument.
There have been plenty of studies pointing to the benefits of music and the arts in childhood development (you can download and read some of those studies here, here and here). The National Association of Music Merchants has reported that music programs in schools keep students engaged in the classroom, improve early cognitive development as well as math and reading skills, and develop critical thinking skills. These findings all point to an obvious course of action – making sure public schools offer music programs – but the stark reality is that music is often one of the first things to be cut, from both the parent’s budget and the school’s. According to Children’s Music Workshop, 1.3 million elementary schools do not have access to music classes or band/choir programs. That is why I’d like to take the rest of this activity to explore how 3D printing may be able to bridge this gap and provide children with the affordable instruments they deserve.
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Currently, 3D printing and the music industry are intertwined, but not in the way that would bridge the previously mentioned music education gap. Artists and musicians are collaborating to produce instruments or shells for instruments with interesting designs and patterns. Below, you can see the 3D printed body of an electric guitar and the 3D printed shells of a drum set. The last picture is of the shell of an electric keyboard. In this case, 3D printing has only been used to enhance the beauty of the instrument – making it novel and futuristic, but unfortunately, not bringing down its cost. As you can tell form these exhibits, 3D printing can be found in the world of music, but not quite in the capacity I had originally hoped.
Guitar (Picture from Created Digital Music)
Drum Set (Picture from 3D Printing News)
Piano (Picture from 3D Printing News)
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I did find some 3D printed instruments that were more targeted towards function rather than form – this is the research an idea like mine would need in order to begin developing more realistic instruments (rather than the whimsical ones we see above). Here is a Thingaverse file for a 3D printed ukulele. A video of the creator playing the final product can be found here. However, the ukulele and many of the other instrument files available on Thingiverse are more eclectic than they are useful. A school band program does not have ukuleles or ocarinas. These programs need violins, flutes, brass, and other traditional instruments that can be found in band and orchestral music.
Outside of Thingiverse, I stumbled across a very special company: Hola. Using Autodesk’s Fusion 360 software, Hola has created a full-sized, completely playable violin. The company has demoed the instrument at conventions and online. Hola has also made the file open-source. The company calls this violin the Holavin. And, with correct strings and tuning, the Holavin sounds really good! Here is a video of Kaitlyn Hova, the founder of the company/Hovalin, playing her 3D printed instrument. And here is a video of an 11-year old who printed and now plays his own Hovalin.
On Quilan & Fanish’s website, a beginner violin can be rented for $69 per month. For An entire school year and summer, that is $828. The Hovalin can be printed for around $70. The printer it can be made on is about $600. The printer and materials combined are less than a year or renting (towards the purchase of) a beginner violin. And once the printer is purchased, many violins can be printed. This is so exciting, because the Hovalin is the first real example of an expensive, traditional instrument being produced at an extremely low-cost with only a small reduction in quality. Keep in mind that usually, no beginner instrument for children will be high quality. The purpose of the instrument is to teach fingering, notes, rhythm, and technique. If a child continues to play and improve, higher quality instruments will follow. But the Hovalin will do just fine for a school of students who don’t have anything at the movement.
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There is not much research or many open-source files of working, 3D printed instruments out there, but the Hovalin proves it can be done. If this momentum in the music/3D printing world continues, there is hope that one day, all children will have the opportunity to pick up an instrument.