Science and Technology
Featured Lesson: Greta Thunberg, Music and the Climate Crisis
"In this lesson, students investigate Greta Thunberg’s efforts in fighting the climate crisis by examining the ways musicians have covered, remixed, or sampled a speech she delivered before the United Nations in 2019. They then consider the larger social role musicians might play in spreading political or social messages. Finally, students are given the opportunity to imagine their own covers, remixes, or original pieces based upon quotes from other young climate activists."
Anyone can sing: Jordan Scholl, TEDx
In the last couple years, Jordan discovered a way to fuse his passions for science and music together, and has taught lectures and masterclasses addressing the anatomy of breathing, the voice, and vocal production in Guelph, at Guelph-Humber, and at McMaster. Much of this passion for understanding the production of the voice at an anatomical level has come from Jordan's career as not only a Grammy-nominated singer, but as a vocal coach and teacher. Jordan believes that even a rudimentary understanding of the mechanisms behind how the voice is produced can pave the way for anyone to be able to sing.
Math Science Music
"MathScienceMusic.org is a free toolkit for teachers, bringing together the best resources in math, science and music. Designed for students, kindergarten through college." Play with online music makers!
Orca: Music & Coding
Orca is an esoteric programming language, designed to create procedural sequencers in which each letter of the alphabet is an operation, where lowercase letters operate on bang, uppercase letters operate each frame.
The application is not a synthesizer, but a flexible live-coding environment capable of sending MIDI, OSC & UDP to your audio interface, like Ableton, Renoise, VCV Rack or SuperCollider.
How Hans Zimmer and Radiohead transformed "Bloom" for Blue Planet II
If you listen closely enough to Radiohead and Hans Zimmer’s rework of “Bloom” for Blue Planet II, you can hear a really fascinating orchestral trick at work. They call it the “tidal orchestra” — it’s a musical effect created by instructing each player to play their notes only if the person next to them isn’t playing. The result is a randomly swelling and fading musical bed for the entire series that captures the feeling of ocean waves. It’s a captivating way to score a soundtrack for the ocean — but it also fits in with a long history of capturing randomness in music composition.
ASAP Science
YouTube Channel "ASAP Science": Making science make sense. Check out their playlist of science parodies!
Featured Lesson: The Music of Machines the Synthesizer Sound Waves and Finding the Future
"This lesson introduces students to the Telharmonium, the Theremin, the Moog and the component on which all of their sound syntheses are formed: the sound wave. Students learn what a sound wave is, how it travels and how our bodies convert it into intelligible sound. Using the Soundbreaking Sound Wave TechTool, students learn to recognize four basic waveform shapes by sound and sight. This lesson also explores the role the synthesizer played in relation to people’s perceptions of technology and culture in the 1970s, 80s and beyond."
Why do Whales Sing?
Communicating underwater is challenging. Light and odors don’t travel well, but sound moves about four times faster in water than in air — which means marine mammals often use sounds to communicate. The most famous of these underwater vocalizations is undoubtedly the whale song. Stephanie Sardelis decodes the evocative melodies composed by the world’s largest mammals.