Seeing music:
A concert that broke new ground

On March 4, 2025, the Recital Hall at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan in Ueno, Tokyo, played host to a free online concert unlike any other. Titled "Come Join a Concert! Where You Can Watch Music and Listen to Video Projection," the event offered a new brand of musical experience that enabled audiences with hearing disabilities to experience music with their eyes. The performance incorporated various instruments, including the Hug Drum—developed by the Sony Group Creative Center—which transforms sound into light and vibration. Participants, including children and adults, people with and without hearing disabilities alike, performed with the Hug Drum alongside workshop leaders from Tokyo Bunka Kaikan.

Inspired by the Tokyo 2025 Deaflympics,^*1 scheduled for fall, the concert aimed to promote an inclusive society where everyone can connect with the arts. The performance also formed part of the TOKYO Smart Culture Project, which is working to digitize Tokyo's cultural assets, take the area's cultural facilities into the future, and promote diverse forms of engagement.
Under the guidance of the concert organizers, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Tokyo Bunka Kaikan (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture), Sony designers did their part to enrich the project. Last year, they began conducting user tests, holding workshops, and dialoguing with participants to bring the final performance to fruition.

*1 The Tokyo 2025 Deaflympics, a multi-sport international event for deaf athletes, is slated to take place in Tokyo in November 2025.

Development on the Hug Drum began in 2023. Aiming to create something that would be easy for children, first-time musicians, and people with hearing disabilities to use, Sony designers crafted the instrument through inclusive design—an approach that creates new value through collaboration with lead users, including people with disabilities. In addition to organizing constructive workshops with lead users, the design team also staged live performances by improvisational percussion group el tempo and sign-language entertainment group oioi to drive the project forward.^*2
In working on the March concert, the designers embarked on a new challenge: taking the Hug Drum to a hall space for a live-streamed performance where viewers could "see the music and hear the imagery."

*2 See "The Hug Drum, a 'Yuru' Musical Instrument: An Inclusive Percussion Instrument That Allows Anyone to Join a Jam Session"

An ensemble of performers
with and without hearing disabilities paints
a symphony of light, sound, and visual media

With all the preparations made, the day of the concert finally arrived. Taking the stage first were four workshop leaders from Tokyo Bunka Kaikan—musical specialists dedicated to enabling everyone to enjoy music, whether playing or listening.
The program began with a performance of "African Blues" by Wolfgang Roggenkamp, arranged for piano, marimba, other percussion, and two sets of the Hug Drum. The Hug Drum make sound and emit light; striking the center of the drum triggers purple light, while edge hits produce green. When you play Hug Drum in pairs, each hit on your drum transmits a vibration to your partner's drum, too. As the performers played the piece, the light cues gave visual expression to sonic differences, creating a dynamic performance that felt like a musical conversation between the Hug Drum themselves.

Next up was an ensemble of four other performers—people with and without hearing disabilities, adults and children. Splitting into two duos, they played the Hug Drum together while eight LED poles behind pulsed in sync with the instruments, glowing in matching colors. Tokyo Bunka Kaikan's signature accordion-like, sound-reflecting wall panels served as a screen for real-time visualizations of instrumental sounds: graphics representing the tones of piano, flute, and percussion. These lighting and graphics were created specifically for this concert, designed to give people a way to "see" the music.

Besides translating sound into light and visual expression, the experience also encouraged full-body engagement. The workshop leaders invited viewers to clap their hands or slap their knees in rhythm with the Hug Drum's colors or step left and right, working to immerse the performers and audience more fully in "Come Join a Concert! Where You Can Watch Music and Listen to Video Projection."

The performance culminated in a rendition of the fourth movement (Scherzo-valse) from Emmanuel Chabrier's Suite pastorale, played by a group of eight. Workshop leaders on piano, flute, timpani, cymbals, and other percussion performed alongside Hug Drum players, with the drum lights accompanied by synchronized LED poles and graphical renderings of instrumental sounds for a powerful fusion of sensory expression. Rhythm, melody, light, and imagery came together in sparkling three-part harmony, delivering a dazzling finale.

New possibilities through inclusion

By uniting people with and without hearing disabilities, adults and children, professionals and first-time musicians, the project made the joys of music more accessible to a broader audience through a uniquely inclusive ensemble. It also saw the Sony Group's inclusive design efforts break new ground, as the team was constantly pursuing the endeavor into uncharted territory.
The initiative presented questions with no ready answers. How do you help people with hearing disabilities perceive and imagine the sounds of classical instruments? And in a livestreamed performance, how do you share tactile vibrations—one of the Hug Drum's core features—with audiences not there in person to feel them? The designers responded with new proposals: LED poles that synced with Hug Drum lights and motion graphics that visualized the instruments' sonic profiles, for example. These solutions for fuller enjoyment emerged from in-depth discussions with workshop leaders and collaborators with hearing disabilities, focusing on how to communicate rhythm and timing in ways outside the scope of actual sound.

One of the biggest challenges was how to visualize the overlapping, harmonizing sounds of piano, flute, and percussion. The initial approach involved layered visual elements, but people said that the results made it hard to perceive the unique "personalities" of the individual instruments. Based on that feedback, the team set to updating the animations: flowing circles for piano, graceful lines for flute, and rippling pulses for timpani so that the distinctive sonic qualities would engage eyes more effectively.
Counting proof-of-concept steps and rehearsals, the team went through almost 10 validations of its approach to the concert. Every element on the technical, performance, and communication fronts—from integrating sound and imagery to how the conductor communicated via hand signs—underwent careful checks.
So, after everything came into place, how did the performers feel standing on stage that day? We asked a workshop leader and a Hug Drum player to share what they took home from the event.

That positive reception extended to the Sony designers, too:
"The way the performers' movements, the instruments' sounds, the light and imagery came together—it was amazing, beyond anything we'd expected."
"People from so many fields— people with and without hearing disabilities and musicians to stage directors, advisors, and Tokyo Bunka Kaikan staff—pooled ideas to create inclusive unity."

Driven by its experiences on the project, the designers will keep pushing forward with new explorations in inclusive design.

Behind-the-scenes video