Music Magic
Project Link: https://mahimaarya.github.io/music_maker/index.html
Project description: The mission is to teach kids about the basic principles behind music and sound. The project is twofold and includes the Arduino for hardware means and the website for a software means. Both components encourage children to be drawn into STEM and develop a love for music. On the hardware end, kids can play a note (or sing a note) into the microphone, then LEDs on the breadboard change color accordingly. On the website component, the kid can sing or play an instrument and the computer audio takes in the sound and displays live notes being played.
Learning goals: Teaches kids about the basic principles behind music and sound. The child can use the website to visualize sounds or for an extra challenge, learn how to program an Arduino to visualize sound.
Materials required: Laptop; Arduino (specifics are on the website but are optional)
Description of the activity for the adult: Because Music Magic is an innovative tool that can be used to educate children of all ages, you have a lot of leeway in how you use this online music tool! Some guidelines for various ages are as follows:
- For kids ages 0-10 : The free, online version of Music Magic can be utilized to teach your students/children about the basic principles of music and sound. This interactive tool can be used by any number of students at a time, so you as an educator have a lot of freedom when using our Music Magic. Given any sound input from the user (that’s you!), this website is programmed to output what music note the input was based on pitch. Because of that, young children can get a basic understanding of music notes through interacting with this tool. You can even set up interactive games and activities to be played along with this interactive music educator. Some examples include:
-
- Using common household items to create new sounds, and encouraging your student to try to replicate music notes with different items
- Once students have experience with this tool, groups of them can play games in which one student sings a note(or, more likely, just screams it), and the others must guess which note it is. The Music Magic can validate the correct answers!
- For kids ages 10-100 : The free, online version of Music Magic can be utilized to teach yourself about the basic principles of music and sound. We also have online documentation for educators to teach students how to create their own Music Magic tool using an Arduino! This is a great introductory project for those who want to learn Arduino, and the end result is not only a functional Music Magic tool that musicians and artists can use, but it also can effectively visualise sound using an electronics circuit. This Arduino project will not only teach students about the basics of Arduino, but also create a great platform for more experienced students to expand upon this project and add more functionality to the Arduino! Some ideas for project expansion include:
-
- Purchasing a long strip of LEDs for decoration, and connecting it to this circuit so that this long strip changes based on music playing from a speaker – this is great for students who like to party!
- Making LEDs fade between colors when detecting pitch.
Happy creating!
Description of the activity for the child: Don’t you love listening to music??? Now you get to listen to your music and see how it makes lights dance! Try Music Magic with your favorite songs or even by singing or speaking into the mic! If you’re up for the challenge, you can program an Arduino to visualize music on-to-go!