The world's most famous and popular language is music.
—PSY
Start here!
This website will help you navigate through a class project on making music (composition) with programming (also known as coding). Don’t worry if you have no experience in either—as this unit is designed for complete beginners.
You’ll be coding in a platform created by Sam Aaron (research associate at Cambridge University) called Sonic Pi. Sonic Pi is used specifically for writing music while learning to code and Sam Aaron actually performs live with Sonic Pi – so it’s pretty cool!
Your Project:
With the help of your classmates and teacher, you will make music with Sonic Pi for a selection of provided short videos of about 1-2 minutes in length. The videos have specific themes on current issues facing the world like climate change, plastic in the oceans, and the refugee crisis. These videos can be found under the resource dropdown on the left hand side. You are encouraged to deeply explore and discuss how you feel about the film’s topic, and express that in music with the Sonic Pi platform.
Your aim is to create what you think might be an appropriate musical background for your chosen film in order to express the emotion you would like to convey. You might need to creatively explore and try many things out before finding something you think sounds right.
A simple way to start being creative is just get curious. Ask questions like ‘I wonder what would happen if…[some crazy idea]’ then hear the results; if it sounded good to you then you’re on the right track! If it sounded terrible, try the opposite or something else. Sometimes the best pieces of music, artwork, creative endeavours, or even major breakthroughs in science come from accidents or just exploring something wacky. Finding something unexpected is really good because it means you’ve discovered something new!
This website will guide you through this unit of work with your teacher. You can navigate and find everything in the side bar menu. Go ahead and have a look at all the pages when you get the chance.
Explore the rest of this website and wait for the next teacher instruction.
→ Like to suggest something for this website/unit of work? Email: petriechris@gmail.com