Art & Games - Module 8: Notes & Scales

"Creating Art & Music" is an introductory course designed to introduce creative activities in the context of art and music. Thus far the course has been taught at the middle school, high school, community college, and university level (with appropriate adaptations for each level). Each week this fall, students in the course are posting their projects in this strand of the Snap! forum. Here's a link to the course materials:

Art, Animations & Music

This week's module is titled "Musical Notes & Scales". A scale is a simple way to organize musical notes that sound pleasing when played in sequence. For example, The most common scale, like the "do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do" from The Sound of Music, is called a major scale. In this module, we will explore three different scales commonly found in Western music. We will build off of the last modules discussion to show how scales can be used to create more complex chords and then discuss methods of constructing melodies that match the chord progression you created in the last module.

For your assignment this week, we would like you to build a melody to match your chords from last week's assignment. The melody should be playable using the Play Tracks block. (Remember: The block works best if the melody is the first track entered.) If you're feeling ambitions, feel free to also create a harmony or a bass track.

Videos:
How to Write a Melody for a Chord Progression (7 min)
The Trick to Writing Harmony (4 min)
Advanced Tips for Writing a Melody (6 min)

Here is the updated project I have for Week 8

This is my updated project for week 8! Project 8 I only added a melody so far but I may want to continue working on this to add a harmony and bass track eventually and possibly more.

This is my updated week 8 project: Snap! Build Your Own Blocks. I redid everything because I wanted to start fresh, but I like how this one ended up as!

This is so cool! I also feel like the different instruments make certain chords/melodies stand out and I really like it!

Here is my updated code for my Week 8 Assignment. My goal was to do the melody for the some Call Me Al by Paul Simon. I added the clarinet as melody and I think it turned out really well. I'm wondering though if I should play with the volume settings to have each instrument stand out more?

Here is my Week 8 project on notes and scales. Since Week 7, I added the saxaphone melody. Link!

This is so cool, great work! I found that I liked playing with the instrument volume a lot on my project, so I'd definitely recommend messing with it to make the melody more clear

This is what I made using some general chord progressions along with some notes I played around in that fit the key I chose. Snap! Build Your Own Blocks

this is my updated assignment for week 8.

This is what I created for week 8.

Here is my song! Snap! Build Your Own Blocks There were a few elements I struggled with, I wish it was a little more advanced but I think it is a good start.

This is my week 8 project: here.

Here's my assignment for week 8! I added a melody to match the lyrical chord from last time.

https://snap.berkeley.edu/snap/snap.html#present:Username=pts4kw&ProjectName=Module%208%20(KyungJung%20Kim)

The saxophone sound is unique and fits well! The slow melody reminds me of Canon in D.

Here is my assignment for week 8:

https://snap.berkeley.edu/snap/snap.html#present:Username=julia.tan&ProjectName=Week%208

Here is my assignment for week 8:

https://snap.berkeley.edu/snap/snap.html#present:Username=dylanndo&ProjectName=Dylan%20Do%20Module%208

Here is my updated project for week 8:
https://snap.berkeley.edu/snap/snap.html#present:Username=lilymutzig&ProjectName=Week%207%20-%20Building%20Chord%20Progressions&editMode&noRun

This is super interesting!! It gives me a lot of different vibes due to the organ (gospelish, spookyish, etc...) I think it would sound very interesting with a bass line but that's not required for this to already sound great.

i really like the music box and closed hi hat combo going on! it sounds super lofi and emits a relaxing, soothing mood.