This Adaptive Musical Instrument Gives Students with Physical and Cognitive Disabilities the Ability to Play

The Arcana Strum Adaptive Musical Instrument View Product

Although music is universally loved and enjoyed by humans worldwide, not everyone can learn to play a musical instrument. When a young girl living with motor impairments had a dream to someday share the stage with her friends and make music together, a team of engineers and musicians joined forces to make her dream come true. Founded as Arcana in 2018, their state-of-the-art Arcana Strum Adaptive Musical Instrument has since helped millions of users of every age to realize their own music-making dreams. Accessible, easy to learn, and fun to play, the Arcana Strum functions as an adaptive guitar. Adaptive Musical Instruments like this have been shown to promote social and communication skills. Read on to learn how the Arcana Strum can help enhance life for you or a loved one.

Why We Love The Arcana Strum Instrument for Adaptive Music

Easy to Teach & Easy to Learn

Specifically developed to mimic a guitar, the Arcana Strum is easy to learn and fun to play. Its simplistic interface enables strumming motions with one hand, while the other hand presses keys, similar to pressing a guitar’s strings, to produce chords. Delivering a full musical experience with riffs, scales, chords, and tunes, teaching students to play this adaptive musical instrument does not require any special training and is easy for music teachers and therapists to incorporate into lesson and therapy plans. Unlike complicated adaptive instruments that might confuse or frustrate their users, the Arcana Strum is straightforward, intuitive, and has a fully accessible design; almost anyone can learn to play the Arcana Strum! Adding the Arcana Strum is an excellent way to make your classroom more accessible to a student with physical disabilities. 

Take It With You Anywhere

Very different from large, regular-sized guitars that require a bulky case to transport, the low-profile and lightweight Arcana Strum is exceptionally easy to take with you wherever you go. Its compact size is perfect for travel, packing away easily in a purse or suitcase for convenient portability. Robustly designed to withstand hard and heavy repetitive use, students can take this with them on the go.

Connects To External Switches & Sensors

Conveniently accessed via USB and BlueTooth, and compatible with adaptive switches through its expansion port - the Arcana Strum’s operation is easy to customize to meet unique user needs. If you purchase an E-Box (sold separately), the Arcana can connect with all kinds of capability switches and sensors, including those that control operation by people using their mouths, head, feet, and other parts of the body. The optional E-Box can be added to further enrich every user’s experience, delivering 6 inputs that can be used to replace the 5 keys and the strum stick. Dissimilar to other adaptive musical devices that do not offer alternative switch control for users living with impairments, the Arcana Strum can be comfortably played by anyone.

Adjustable Settings For Accessibility 

The Arcana Strum offers a wide range of adaptations to meet the unique needs of every user, including left and right-handed operation. The sensitivity of the handle is adjustable, while users can also choose a variety of modes that change the note arrangement, including harmonic or melodic modes. Aside from the E-Box (which is sold separately) that enables a multitude of different switch connections, other optional upgrades that help you customize this adaptive instrument to meet a variety of user needs include a 3-key keyboard and 4 different Strum Stick handles. 

The standard 5-key keyboard can be replaced with the 3-key accessory for users who require a larger access surface and a less complicated note, octave, and chord range. Strum Stick options include the standard toggle along with an adjustable Y handle and strap for hands or feet, the flat handle that can be used by various body parts, the narrow handle that most resembles a joystick, and the ball handle for users with manual difficulties. 

The Sound of Healing

As more studies confirm the healing power of music, this growing body of research is finding all kinds of positive ways our bodies and minds respond to this therapy. Enhancing quality of life, promoting recovery, and exciting and activating us like nothing else, experiencing music - particularly by playing an instrument - may be one of the best ways to keep the brain healthy. It taps into both the left and right sides of the brain, engaging every major part of our central nervous system. Providing a total workout for the brain along with total sensory input of simultaneous visual, emotional, and auditory input, playing music on an instrument like the Arcana Strum helps children and adults of any age to boost memory and cognitive function. 

Full of Educational Resources You Need to Get Started

Unlike other adaptive instruments that don’t come with any real support or guidance, the Arcana Strum offers a wide range of educational resources to get you started on your musical journey. From its comprehensive user manual and instructional videos to downloadable music theory guidelines and songbooks, Arcana provides everything you need to start making and enjoying music. It’s also compatible with a multitude of musical applications, such as Garageband, while Arcana is also working on the development of its own mobile app. In addition, Arcana just launched an online Music School that includes student activities and teacher tools.

Plug and Play

Fast and straightforward to connect to various applications and samplers via low-energy Bluetooth, the Arcana Strum operates by plugging it into any iPad, phone, computer, or tablet that is Bluetooth-enabled. This plug-and-play device offers the best sound by connecting it to external speakers or headphones as well. While most other adaptive and regular musical instruments require a lot of fine-tuning before they can be played, the Arcana Strum is ready to rock and roll! The easy set-up requires connecting to a mobile device or MAC/PC. 

What Are Customers Saying?

“We have been amazed at the learning process the Arcana Strum has given our students, and how excited we are to witness their overwhelmingly positive reactions. They are enjoying themselves as they learn to read music, learn chords, and play familiar tunes. Their learning motivation is high because the instrument design meets their physical needs, so they don’t give up when the process gets challenging. It has been wonderful to see students who typically experience difficulties when using their hands and fingers be able to engage with the Arcana Strum effectively.”

- Noa Nitzan, occupational therapist, Professional Director of the Technology Center, and Tamar Shatz, music therapist at the School for Special Education at Beit Issie Shapiro

“We were so excited to find out that even the most severely affected people living with serious motor disabilities found the ability to create music with the Arcana Strum. The great pleasure reflected on their faces was something wonderful to behold.”

- Milcha Rosen, Director of “Assif”, Hassaf Harofe Hospital

“As a new musical environment that enables our students to play musical instruments adapted to their disability, the Arcana musical program has been incredibly beneficial, placing an emphasis on the students’ independence, responsibility, abilities, and success.”

- Shenhav Berman, Principal, “ON” Public School

Final Thoughts

Enabling anyone to start making and creating music, the technologically-advanced Arcana Strum Adaptive Musical Instrument delivers a feature-rich design that’s customizable to meet specific user requirements. The capabilities of this unique instrument to provide comprehensive music education should not be underestimated. With options for switching between melodic and harmonic mode, changing the chords to sevenths, transposing the scale of the notes, and adjusting note dynamics and duration, users have plenty of tools to learn the intricacies of music, from the basics to more advanced theory. 

Thanks for learning more about this amazing adaptive instrument for students with physical disabilities, and we invite you to browse other Adaptive Musical Instruments offering a range of benefits for specific conditions. 

Interested in reading more about special needs? Check out our Special Needs articles that review best-selling products, buying guides, and more. Additionally, be sure to check out our constantly expanding educational resource, Caregiver University, for articles from our expert team.