Tunes on the table

The Music Table is an augmented reality system for composing music by manipulating objects on a tabletop as a physicalized representation of the music being heard. Educational theory, and the apparent success of related applications in various learning contexts, seems to support this idea. In our experiments with children, all were able to make a musical pattern and made many changes to their pattern over a short period of time. We propose its suitability as an educational tool, particularly in short and intense interactive learning situations such as children's museums. We discuss some future developments of the idea.