Found Instruments
One of the first tasks for attendees was to create an instrument out of discarded materials: utensils, kitchen containers, garage sale finds and spare parts. Attendees, who came from a wide range of academic fields, were challenged to collaborate on a composition using the newly-created instruments. After the compositions were completed, groups had to notate the pieces, including playing instructions for the new instruments. This led to an incredibly frustrating and instructive experience about the nature of musical notation and why it is constructed the way we commonly see it.
Scratch is web-based programming interface designed to allow beginning and non-programmers to create simple games and animations. It also has a very robust audio engine for both MIDI sequencing and audio editing and playback. Because of this, it can be a very powerful tool for translating musical elements into mathematical concepts. This process forces a musician to think critically and deeply about fundamental elements such as rhythm and time. Since computers operate on principles of time, entering musical notation into Scratch forces the user to translate the duration of a note into time (e.g., if mm=60, how many seconds does a half-note need to sound?). Similarly, MIDI maps refer to notes by a key number. Users wishing to program in pitches within a given scale must be able to translate that pitch set into half-steps in order to assign the proper key numbers to each pitch. By understanding the half-step relationships that underlie each pitch set, users have to become extremely comfortable with the idea of scale construction and pitch relationships.
One of the most interesting elements of the Scratch process was attendees were challenged to break down the iconic riff from Led Zepplin's Kashmir into notes which could be grouped together and looped. Alex Ruthmann, now at NYU, led the attendees through the process of defining a musical sequence, then looping and modifying that sequence to create a larger musical pattern. By reducing the entire guitar sequence into the smallest possible group of notes which could be looped and modified, the concept of sequence and repetition came into play. In the Sound Thinking course, students use flowcharting and other algorithmic strategies common in computer science to analyze large-scale form and look at sectional relationship in composition.
MaKey MaKey Instruments
In a third stage, these two elements were combined using MaKey MaKey USB interfaces. MaKey MaKeys are designed to allow a user to connect any conductive material to form circuits which trigger individual computer key presses. In this way, users can create unique interfaces designed to control their computers by using food, metal scraps, water and even each other as the keys. In combination with Scratch, my colleague and I built a keyboard out of spoons from the lunch table. This keyboard played audio which we recorded of him playing each note of a major scale on his viola. This gave the user the ability to improvise directly in the major scale. Behind that we sequenced in a repeated chord progression of Pachelbel's Canon, which the user would improvise over.
In the process of constructing this, we had to think deeply about rhythm, time and duration, as well as melodic concepts such as voice leading, pitch sets and tonality, and the performance and recording aspects of sampling the viola audio.
A Range of Applications
Attendees represented academic departments from universities and K12 institutions around the country. At the close of the workshop, each team presented ideas for incorporating these strategies and concepts into their home institutions, which ranged from individual projects or teaching methods to new course proposals. While these projects came out of Heines, Greher and Ruthmann's experience teaching an interdisciplinary course, they can be used to develop musical understanding in a variety of existing settings.
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