“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, students in the course are posting their projects in this strand of the Snap! forum. Here’s a link to the course materials:
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.
Here is my melody with a chord progression project. I used Luma’s Lullaby from Super Mario Galaxy for this project, as it was in 4/4 and easy to transcribe. I used reporters to create chords that would otherwise be difficult to create with the tools already provided to me. My next goal is to figure out how to loop the track so it repeats from the beginning.
Here is my melody for this weeks project. For my workflow, I basically took what I created from last week, and used the chord and scale to make the notes flow well with the chords that were played. I wanted my melody to kind of follow and progressive tempo where it felt like it was climbing and then descending again, hence my use of different note lengths. One issue I’m having is for the second chord (G major), When it B4, C5, and then back to B4 in the melody, it sounds kind of flat/off, but I’m unsure how to fix it as these should flow well together given the scale.
Here is my tune for this week! I built on what I did last week by consolidating the chords and melody to be in reporter blocks as well as adding a harmony based on the chords. I want to play around more with what notes I am using for the harmony, but I like how it sounds so far.
For my tune this week I built off the previous melody, chords, and drum backing I produced last week. This week, I decided to add piano lyrics to provide more depth to my tune. While I think the lyrics sound pretty good, I am struggling to fix the pause that is happening between my two measures of 4. I cannot figure out why the entire track is going silent for a period of time before starting again. Edit: I fixed some of the lyrics notes to different octaves, which I think made the entire piece flow more cohesively. Additionally, I decreased the rest duration in the fourth measure from a whole rest to four quarter rests. The pause in the tune is still there, but with the quarter rests it seems to have lessened.
I used the notes in each of the chords playing in the background as the basis for my melody, as we discussed in class. I also wanted to ensure that it wasn’t repetitive, so I changed the pattern at the end. I removed some of the drums that I had in my project last week because they were overpowering the melody.
I like the melody that you made! My one piece of feedback is that the note durations in your first measure go beyond the allowed length of the measure, so you could split it up to ensure the chords are being played when you expect.
For this week’s assignment, I created a melody inspired by an R&B ballad. I chose the key of C# Major and built the melody using notes from that scale. I think the chord progression gives the melody a bittersweet feeling.
https://snap.berkeley.edu/snap/snap.html#present:Username=artiehumphreys&ProjectName=Chord%20Progression
I expanded on my song from last week by adding a drumline underneath it. I am struggling with properly transcribing the organ part and also ensuring the drums don’t fall out of rhythm, which sometimes happens out of nowhere. Sometimes, the drum pattern just diverges from what I have. I also worked on simplifying my piano logic and using the chord blocks while also creating my own.
For this week, I worked backwards, starting with a melody, the refrain from Hadestown, and finding a chord progression to match it. While the chords technically work with the key of the song, they don’t have a specific progression, more so just matching whichever note is playing at the time, so I would like to see if there is a more fitting progression to use for this melody.
For this week, I didn’t really have a vision for my song, I kinda just went with the flow. For the first 4 measures I stuck to the notes in each chord to make my melody. Then for the last 4, I branched out a bit and tried notes in the whole scale. It was a little tricky trying to find out what would sound good with the last two measures, because I wanted it to have a little texture but still sound complete. I played around with the timing of the notes and that helped me achieve the result I was looking for.
I like this! It sounds like it could be part of the soundtrack for a Disney movie with knights and princes. I also like how you added a harmony. I would recommend adding one more note for the melody or harmony to finish it out but it sounds good and has a nice progression!
I used my previously made chords and melody as the start to this assignment. I extended it to have more measures. I maybe should have altered the notes in measures since they are duplicates, but happy with how it turned out.
I used my previous chord progression for this assignment. I added a melody consisting of eighth notes that had a little upbeat feeling to it. I want to add more to it, and maybe experiment with different note patterns.
I think this is really good. I don’t know what instrument it is but it sounds a bit low, so you could maybe change that to fit the song better. All the notes sound good though so good work.
I made a melody to go along with my chords that uses the overdrive guitar. I thought this produced a fun sound at higher octaves that went well with the lower normal electric guitar for the chords. It was a bit tricky to find a melody that went well with the chords I made for the last assignment but I am happy with how it came out.
I like that you used different instruments for the different melody/harmony lines so the lyrics are more clear. Good luck figuring out the pause in between!
I really like how this sounds! It reminds me of like a ukulele and is very happy and relaxing! I think that potentially you could add more different types of sounds to it like a drum beat or maracas too!