skip to main content
10.1145/3458709.3458977acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesahsConference Proceedingsconference-collections
poster

Reducing Muscle Activity when Playing Tremolo by Using Electrical Muscle Stimulation

Published: 11 July 2021 Publication History

Abstract

When beginners play the piano, the activity of the forearm muscles tends to be greater than that of experts because beginners move their fingers with more force than necessary. Reducing forearm muscle activity is important for pianists to prevent fatigue and injury. However, it is difficult for beginners to learn how to do so. In this paper, we propose using electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) to teach beginners how to reduce this muscle activity while playing a tremolo. Since experts use wrist rotation efficiently when playing tremolos, we apply EMS not to muscles that are relevant to moving the fingers but to the supinator muscle and the pronator teres muscle, which are involved in wrist rotation. We conducted a user study with eight beginners to investigate how the forearm muscle activity changed through intervention with the EMS support system. After practicing with EMS, the activity level of the extensor pollicis longus muscle and extensor digitorum muscle on the forearm was significantly lower, and the participants felt less fatigue when playing tremolos. The results suggest that an EMS support system can reduce target muscle activity by applying EMS to other muscles to teach how to move limbs efficiently.

References

[1]
Carlo J De Luca, L Donald Gilmore, Mikhail Kuznetsov, and Serge H Roy. 2010. Filtering the surface EMG signal: Movement artifact and baseline noise contamination. Journal of biomechanics 43, 8 (2010), 1573–1579. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbiomech.2010.01.027
[2]
Ayaka Ebisu, Satoshi Hashizume, Kenta Suzuki, Akira Ishii, Mose Sakashita, and Yoichi Ochiai. 2017. Stimulated percussions: method to control human for learning music by using electrical muscle stimulation. In Proceedings of the 8th Augmented Human International Conference. 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1145/3041164.3041202
[3]
Shinichi Furuya, Tomoko Aoki, Hidehiro Nakahara, and Hiroshi Kinoshita. 2012. Individual differences in the biomechanical effect of loudness and tempo on upper-limb movements during repetitive piano keystrokes. Human movement science 31, 1 (2012), 26–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.humov.2011.01.002
[4]
Shinichi Furuya, Tatsushi Goda, Haruhiro Katayose, Hiroyoshi Miwa, and Noriko Nagata. 2011. Distinct inter-joint coordination during fast alternate keystrokes in pianists with superior skill. Frontiers in human neuroscience 5 (2011), 50. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00050
[5]
Shinichi Furuya and Hiroshi Kinoshita. 2008. Organization of the upper limb movement for piano key-depression differs between expert pianists and novice players. Experimental Brain Research 185, 4 (2008), 581–593. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-1184-9
[6]
Mahmoud Hassan, Florian Daiber, Frederik Wiehr, Felix Kosmalla, and Antonio Krüger. 2017. Footstriker: An EMS-based foot strike assistant for running. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies 1, 1 (2017), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3053332
[7]
Cheryl D Metcalf, Thomas A Irvine, Jennifer L Sims, Yu L Wang, Alvin WY Su, and David O Norris. 2014. Complex hand dexterity: a review of biomechanical methods for measuring musical performance. Frontiers in psychology 5 (2014), 414. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00414
[8]
Florian Floyd Mueller, Pedro Lopes, Paul Strohmeier, Wendy Ju, Caitlyn Seim, Martin Weigel, Suranga Nanayakkara, Marianna Obrist, Zhuying Li, Joseph Delfa, 2020. Next Steps for Human-Computer Integration. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376242
[9]
Arinobu Niijima, Takashi Isezaki, Ryosuke Aoki, Tomoki Watanabe, and Tomohiro Yamada. 2018. Controlling maximal voluntary contraction of the upper limb muscles by facial electrical stimulation. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173968
[10]
Dietrich Parlitz, Thomas Peschel, and Eckart Altenmüller. 1998. Assessment of dynamic finger forces in pianists: effects of training and expertise. Journal of biomechanics 31, 11 (1998), 1063–1067. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0021-9290(98)00113-4
[11]
Emi Tamaki, Takashi Miyaki, and Jun Rekimoto. 2011. PossessedHand: techniques for controlling human hands using electrical muscles stimuli. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 543–552. https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1979018
[12]
Sho Tatsuno, Tomohiko Hayakawa, and Masatoshi Ishikawa. 2017. Supportive training system for sports skill acquisition based on electrical stimulation. In 2017 IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC). IEEE, 466–471. https://doi.org/10.1109/WHC.2017.7989946

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)SplitBody: Reducing Mental Workload while Multitasking via Muscle StimulationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642629(1-11)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)Understanding User Acceptance of Electrical Muscle Stimulation in Human-Computer InteractionProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642585(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2022)From Perception to Action: A Review and Taxonomy on Electrical Muscle Stimulation in HCIProceedings of the 21st International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3568444.3568460(159-171)Online publication date: 27-Nov-2022
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Reducing Muscle Activity when Playing Tremolo by Using Electrical Muscle Stimulation
      Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

      Recommendations

      Comments

      Information & Contributors

      Information

      Published In

      cover image ACM Other conferences
      AHs '21: Proceedings of the Augmented Humans International Conference 2021
      February 2021
      321 pages
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 11 July 2021

      Check for updates

      Qualifiers

      • Poster
      • Research
      • Refereed limited

      Conference

      AHs '21
      AHs '21: Augmented Humans International Conference 2021
      February 22 - 24, 2021
      Rovaniemi, Finland

      Contributors

      Other Metrics

      Bibliometrics & Citations

      Bibliometrics

      Article Metrics

      • Downloads (Last 12 months)17
      • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)5
      Reflects downloads up to 05 Mar 2025

      Other Metrics

      Citations

      Cited By

      View all
      • (2024)SplitBody: Reducing Mental Workload while Multitasking via Muscle StimulationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642629(1-11)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
      • (2024)Understanding User Acceptance of Electrical Muscle Stimulation in Human-Computer InteractionProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642585(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
      • (2022)From Perception to Action: A Review and Taxonomy on Electrical Muscle Stimulation in HCIProceedings of the 21st International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3568444.3568460(159-171)Online publication date: 27-Nov-2022
      • (2021)Bionics Technology for the Future of Medicine and HealthNTT Technical Review10.53829/ntr202107fa619:7(46-51)Online publication date: Jul-2021
      • (2021)Reducing Muscle Activity when Playing Tremolo by Using Electrical Muscle Stimulation to Learn Efficient Motor SkillsProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/34781105:3(1-17)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2021

      View Options

      Login options

      View options

      PDF

      View or Download as a PDF file.

      PDF

      eReader

      View online with eReader.

      eReader

      HTML Format

      View this article in HTML Format.

      HTML Format

      Figures

      Tables

      Media

      Share

      Share

      Share this Publication link

      Share on social media