Encounters With Music That Awaken the Senses

January 8, 2025

Yamaha Music Yokohama Minato Mirai, an experiential brand shop in Yokohama, invites everyone to explore the joy of music and musical instruments. Meanwhile, the Interactive Musical Station at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York fosters children's creativity through sound. Despite their differences in location and genre, both spaces share a common goal: introducing new ways of experiencing music that awaken and engage the senses.

Shaping New Spaces Through Collaboration

These projects were each groundbreaking in their own way. The experiential brand shop in Yokohama marks a bold new venture with a seamless flow between floors, featuring a variety of innovative installations such as one that blends 3D sound, musical instruments, and artistic video. Similarly, the Interactive Musical Station posed its own challenges, ultimately crafting an engaging experience in a public space that appeals to a wide range of children. What made both projects even more demanding is that they were created as permanent installations, rather than temporary pop-ups. The complexity of their maintenance and operation is significantly higher than that of a short-term project.

Both projects required collaboration with a wide range of professionals. For the brand shop, this involved in-house engineers and designers, along with shop staff and specialized contractors from outside the company. For the Interactive Musical Station, teams of experts from The Met, including specialists in education and music, worked alongside an architectural firm responsible for the space design. Throughout both projects, diverse professionals combined their knowledge and expertise to overcome many challenges.

“The greatest joy I get from this work is collaborating with professionals both within and outside the company,” Toyoda reflects. “For this specific project, each expert brought their specialized knowledge from the planning stages through to on-site management, and together we worked through challenges without compromise. That’s what made this shop possible.” In both Yokohama and New York, the teams had some disagreements, but open discussions and a shared goal of making visitors smile kept them united as they shaped the project.

Discovering Play Through a Child's Eyes

After many months of trial and error, both spaces finally opened. Toyoda and Washio have been pleasantly surprised by how visitors interact with and enjoy the environments.

For Toyoda, the biggest surprise at the interactive brand shop was how many more people than expected tried out the instruments and experiences. In a typical music store, customers often need to ask a staff member to try an instrument, and many hesitate to make noise in the quiet environment. But at the Minato Mirai shop, visitors feel comfortable picking up instruments and giving them a try. For example, a visitor might be captivated by the vibrations of a violin in the first-floor Experience Zone, then head upstairs to listen to a live performance by an artist on the second floor. Inspired, they may try playing the violin themselves, laughing at their lack of skill but becoming more interested in the process. The shop creates an open, welcoming space where people can explore music from different perspectives, making their first encounter with instruments an enjoyable experience.

Meanwhile, what surprised Washio most about the Interactive Musical Station was the energy and creativity the children displayed. In "Marimba Woods," where children use mallets to strike soundboards made of different types of wood, many began to experiment beyond the intended setup, hitting other objects like glass and the floor. “While I sometimes get nervous about them damaging the instruments and facility,” Washio admits, “seeing the kids eagerly trying to create new sounds is a clear sign that I accomplished exactly what I set out to do.”

Washio also realized the unique appeal of analog musical instruments. Next to the Interactive Musical Station is a zone featuring digital devices, but he noticed that children’s reactions tended to be more uniform when interacting with digital technology. In contrast, with analog instruments, even slight variations in how an instrument is struck result in different sounds, allowing children to feel the depth of sound with their whole body. “Watching the children engage with the analog experience showed me just how important it is to feel real sound physically,” Washio reflects.

Toyoda has observed a similar phenomenon at the Music Canvas, noting that "children interact with sound in ways adults wouldn’t even think of." Both she and Washio are constantly learning and discovering new things by watching how children freely explore sound, unbound by conventional thinking or preconceived notions.

True to Your Passions, Open to New Sensations

Yamaha Music Yokohama Minato Mirai and the Interactive Musical Station in New York both offer visitors the chance to awaken their senses and nurture their sensibilities in ways that go beyond everyday experiences. But what kind of experiences do Toyoda and Washio believe truly "nurture sensibilities"?

Toyoda believes that "experiences that move your heart in a straightforward way" are the secret to nurturing sensitivity. "I personally cherish moments when I can truly feel joy or stay true to my emotions," she says. By engaging in activities like playing music or attending events, she connects with her emotions and deepens her sensibilities. "I hope this space offers the same experience for others—a place where people can genuinely feel their hearts move, find new passions, feel empowered in pursuing their goals, and enrich their overall well-being."

For Washio, cultivating sensitivity means "widening the range of your senses." He explains, "When you expand your ability to perceive, you can enjoy the same thing from multiple perspectives and discover something new each time. Having rich sensitivity allows you to feel moved, even if you live a simple life. I think that’s what it means to have well-being.

To create a space that nurtures people's sensibilities, it's essential to first refine your own. By staying true to what they love and continually expanding their own sensitivity, Toyoda and Washio are able to design spaces that offer visitors encounters with music every day.

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