Tutorial 4a
Monday 16th of March, 2020
This week we entered online mode. The first thing we did was more step sequencing…except online! Yay!
We were shown a web application called “Groove Pizza”. Now I know you’re thinking ” pizza lol” but no seriously take a look at picture of the application.
Okay now I feel like you’re thinking “lul music students trying to maths lul” but hear me out. The numbers on the outer circle represents pizza slices as well as the bar numbers and we can make all different types of beats with it! We can also change the volume, BPM, swing and the amount of slices of pizza to create a variety of beats!
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Alright so it probably still seems confusing looking at this picture. I’ll be honest, I was incredibly confused by this application when we first used it. However, after trying a few different things and eating some of the pizza, I did end up understanding the basis of this colorful pie.
We can select different types of drum sounds on the left side of the screen, and create many different beat patterns with this application. The application itself is also very colorful so it would be attractive to most students. Creating beats can be confusing at first but kids are smart! They will end up understanding the application very fast.
However, the application is limited in creativity because it forces students to create music only by beats. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it does end up being quite simple when thinking about classroom content. Therefore, it most definitely can be used as a tool in classrooms, but only as a simple, straight-fowardish content for a small section of work.
Although, pizza is definitely delicious so some students may prefer this compared to Soundtrap.
Tutorial 4b
Wednesday 18th of March, 2020
This week was about using Notation Software to illustrate worksheets and other music resources.
We started by using MuseScore to notate a small piece of music (was literally 8 notes for me) to understand the software and get used to the software.
James had also taught us a very useful technique in MuseScore. We can use the camera icon in the middle of the task bar to grab any section of the score that we need. This allows us to grab any part of the score with a clean background and can easily copy into any assessments! (Exicitng)
Further along in the tutorial, James had showed us two in-browser online software that we can use in teaching which are: NoteFlight and Flat.io.
Both of these are very accessible in classrooms to allow students to easily notate on the fly. We can also export our music project in MuseScore into a XML file to also import into these in-browser software or any software that reads MusicXML files
Personally, I think these apps feel really clunky to run without a capable computer. I feel that MuseScore is absolutely capable enough for students to utilize as a music notation software. (NoteFlight was not able to playback my vocal project and used a piano instead!)
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