Digital Music

Robot Dance

By: Kaleigh Neel

Robot Dance Reflection

I created my song Robot Dance using Incredibox. Incredibox is a fun and easy to use website where kids of all ages learn how to create music using loops. The loops on Incredibox are 16 beats long and repeat over and over again. This helped improve my song by layering it, to make the music have texture.

The goal of Robot Dance is to make the listener dance and groove on the dance floor. I started off with the low beat-boxing sound to get a steady beat. Then I found sounds that complimented each other. After that I wanted to get more excitement in the song, so I added a high robot sound to make the song groovier. I needed some more bass to balance out the high pitched sounds, so I added the loop that sounded bum bum bum bummm. Then I changed the beat of the song to keep the listener interested. Then I went back to the loop that said bum bum bum bummm for the rest of the song. It makes it have a really interesting ending by stopping abruptly. It seems that when it stops the robot runs out of energy.

After my first version I asked my music teacher about what to do next and he said not to keep the same notes around for too long and to keep the song feedback from my friend. He didn’t like the sound of high pitched humming that I had in the original version, so I added a sound that was in the middle of the high and low pitches, and it made the harmony between the robot sound and beat-boxing.

When I finished my 5th version, I thought I had it done, but then I put it to the dance test for my family. When they heard the music, they danced in some parts and in other parts they didn’t. I changed the parts that they didn’t dance to because it was very boring, so I put the loop that made the sound “oh ya” by itself for a few beats. Once my sister was dancing through the entire song, I just knew I had it right.

This experience in Incredibox has helped me become a better musician because now I know how to work with loops and layering.