A digital platform for sounds and visuals of Bɔbɔɔbɔ instruments for musical activities

Abstract

The relentless desire to use the sounds and visuals of Ghanaian traditional musical instruments on digital platforms can be seen in the effort to manipulate the sounds and visuals of Ghanaian traditional instruments for musical activities on digital platforms. The J.H. Nketiah’s Digital Platform Model and other digital platform models embarked on holistic digitisation of the sounds and visuals of Ghanaian traditional music elements without making organized inferences to specific musical components such as musical instruments, songs and dance movements. Indeed, these models had no room to consider how stakeholders desired to use the sounds and visuals they created. Considering the importance of Ghanaian traditional musical instruments for various musical activities on digital platforms, bƆbƆƆbƆ was purposively selected for a traditional musical expedition. Based on the Uses and Gratification theory, the Interdisciplinary Theory and the Technological Acceptance Model, the study used bibliographic, discographic and applied ethnographic design to explore how stakeholders desired to use the sounds and visuals of bƆbƆƆbƆ musical instruments. Based on the same theories, appropriate facility, equipment and specific techniques were then used to record the sounds and visuals of bƆbƆƆbƆ musical instruments to create a database and a template from WordPress was selected and edited to host the database to create the website for the sounds and visuals of bƆbƆƆbƆ musical instruments accordingly. The expedition resulted in a digital platform model termed the Two-Hand Steering Digital Platform Model for the sounds and visuals of Ghanaian traditional musical instruments. The study concluded that the idea to develop a digital platform for Ghanaian traditional musical elements should come from the viewpoints of the users and the practiceice should be guided by existing written and media materials as well as digital platforms. The study recommended the Two-hand Steering Digital Platform model for the development of digital platforms for elements in Ghanaian traditional music.