Music Blocks

Music Blocks is a programming environment for children age 13 interested in music and graphics. Music Blocks incorporates many common elements of music, such as pitch, rhythm, volume, and, to some degree, timbre, and texture. When you first launch Music Blocks, you'll see a stack of blocks representing four notes: Do 4, Mi 4, Sol 4, and Do 5. The first note is a 1/2 note; the second and third notes are 1/4 notes; the fourth note is a 1/1 note. Try clicking on the Start block or click on the Play button. You should hear the notes play in succession: Do Mi Sol Do. To write your own programs, drag blocks from their respective palettes on the left side of the screen. Use multiple blocks in, stack(s) to create music and drawings; as the mouse moves under your control, colorful lines are drawn and music of your creation is played. Note: that blocks either snap together vertically or horizontally. Vertical connections indicate program (and temporal) flow, Code is executed from the top to bottom of a stack of blocks. Horizontal connections are used for parameters and arguments, e.g., the name of a pitch, the duration of a note, the numerator and denominator of a division. From the shape of the block, it should be apparent whether they connect vertically or horizontally. Some blocks, referred to as "clamp" blocks have an interior—child—flow. This might be code that is run if a condition is true, or, more common, the code that is run over the duration of a note. For the most part, any combination of blocks will run (although there is no guarantee that they will produce music). Illegal combinations of blocks will be flag by a warning on the screen as the program runs. You can delete a block by dragging it back into the trash area that appears at the bottom of the screen. ********************** Features: Toolbars Block Palettes Defining a note A quick tour of selected blocks Flow Palette Widget Palette Planet View