jamTable: Can Physical Interfaces Support the Collaboration Between Novice and Experienced Musicians? Augusto Esteves 1 , Filipe Quintal 1,2 , and Ian Oakley 1,2 1 CCCEE, University of Madeira, Funchal, Portugal 2 Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, Funchal, Portugal {augustoeae, filp3q, ian.r.oakley}@gmail.com Abstract. This paper introduces jamTable, a system that enables the collaboration between users playing a standard musical instrument and users interacting with a tangible musical sequencer. In an introductory study both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from eight participants in two setup conditions: Musician-Musician and Novice-Musician pairs. By comparing the performance of participants in these two groups, this paper gathers relevant insights regarding the ability of a tangible musical application such as the jamTable to support musical collaborations between novice and experienced musicians – in both learning or performance activities. 1 Introduction Music has been moving from a social to a personal experience, from the concerts halls to the iPods, while technology has been doing exactly the opposite – moving towards the Web and towards the group [15]. One of the latest instantiations of this trend in technology has been the tangible interaction paradigm, where the digital is mapped to the physical, allowing for several concurrent users to engage directly with information through a rich sensorial experience (see Fig. 1). As such, tangible interaction has been associated with several benefits that seem appropriate for a musical context, such as: support for seamless collaboration, visible interaction, increased levels of engagement and enjoyment, and of being highly effective in learning scenarios [11, 18]. Several tangible musical applications have been developed that strive for these qualities, including the popular reacTable [10] or the Audiopad [17]. Research on such applications normally reports on their ability to support a wide range of users in learning and performance tasks [e.g. 3, 5, 10, 12, 15], and while they do provide an unique musical experience, most of these claims stem from subjective and qualitative metrics. In order to look into how quantitative data can be obtained to back up such claims, this paper presents both the jamTable, a tangible system designed to support the collaboration between novice and experienced musicians, and an introductory study that captures both quantitative and qualitative data to gather insights in the true benefits of tangible musical applications.