![]() You could extend this activity by assigning the shapes that children have drawn to a specific percussion instrument. The magical experience in the classroom every time is seeing children's faces light up when they recreate their drawing on the screen and see what their piece of music sounds like. This naturally leads into starting to compose their own graphic scores by thinking about how they could order the shapes into a sequence or pattern by drawing their own choice of three or four shapes on a piece of paper. They can then listen to the sounds that these shapes make and try to describe them, introducing them to the concept of timbre. This section of the website allows users to draw shapes on a blank canvas which then automatically transform into animated sounds.Ĭhildren can start composing in seconds by drawing different shapes using an interactive white board, tablet, or laptop. Kandinsky (a musical experiment based on the artist of the same name), can be used to aid the teaching of graphic score composition. Three of these ‘experiments’ – Kandinsky, Rhythm and Song Maker – lend themselves well to helping children to compose their own pieces of music across multiple year groups. ![]() One website I use regularly, which is both free and expansive in terms of content, is Chrome Music Lab, which, as the website explains, ‘makes learning music more accessible through fun, hands-on experiments’. There are many free and easy-to-use websites out there, often at the other end of a simple Google search. Using music technology for composition does not need to be an expensive or specialist practice to be an effective part of the primary music classroom. This entry was posted in Uncategorized by Devon Floyd. It’s also completely free, so probably worth checking out. Although somewhat limited in its scope, I think Chrome Music Lab is a viable content creation tool that could be used in many classroom settings. I would specifically use Song Maker to teach fractions and decimals, as the program lends itself to 4/4 learning. Its simple design and entertaining visuals foster new learning opportunities in multiple subject areas. I could see the Chrome Music Lab working well in middle years classrooms. I believe this was a design decision, as most of the tools (except the Song Maker) follow this format. Another critique of Chrome Music Lab more broadly is that most of the tools demonstrate a very specific audio point, but don’t transfer well into music creation. With only one instrument and one line of percussion, the opportunity for more complex musical experimentation is lacking. One drawback of the Song Maker is it’s limitations in the number of different tracks. It also has a voice recording option, where users can sing their melody into the program via a computer’s microphone. It can also save in MIDI format, which allows the user to transfer their work into other Digital Audio Workstations, where other effects and edits can added. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles in this program, which is a positive, as sometimes extra features just cause extra confusion, yet it still has enough options to keep the user engaged long enough to create an artefact. I really like the simple layout of the Song Maker, and could see it being utilized in Arts Education, Science, and Numeracy. As mentioned before, a user is able to save or embed their creations with ease. The user can also change the tempo, key, and length in settings. There are 5 different piano sounds, and 4 different percussive sounds to choose from. The Song Maker tool provides a 16 beat loop that includes a piano roll, so users can create their own melodies as well as a percussive track. Screenshot of Song Maker by Chrome Music Lab It also allows users to easily share ideas with multiple export/download options, including embeddable links, and provides a wide range of uses. ![]() Sound Waves, which is a visualizer that accompanies the user’s note inputs), but there is also a Song Maker, that allows users to create, save, and share a 16 beat audio loop. ![]() Some of the experiments are more theoretical in nature (i.e. I decided to look at Chro me Music Lab, which is a collection of 14 open-source sound experiments that can be manipulated by the user, and is available on any device that can open the Google Chrome web browser.
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