Circuit Musical Instrument!

Grade Level: Appropriate for grades 1-3.

Learning Objectives: 

Students will be able to...

Use coding to create musical notes controlled by hand motions.

Use hand motions to creatively make music with a circuit playground and a glove.

Connect computer science and coding with music.

Computer Science Standards:

Each student will...

CS.AP.1.3 Arrange sequences and simple loops in the correct order.

CS.AP.2.3 Develop programs with sequences and simple loops to express ideas or address

a problem.

Arts Standards:

Each student will...

1. Create musical ideas for a purpose.

11. Describe connections between music, arts, and daily life in a variety of contexts.

Supplies:

• Circuit Playground

• Cord for circuit playground to computer

• Glove

• Battery pack (optional)

• Computer (optional chrome book or ipad with dongle)

• Velcro dots

Steps for making the Circuit Playground Musical Instrument:

1. Plug in your Circuit Playground to your computer and code the Circuit Playground to make a musical instrument (see instructions for coding below).

2. Once the code is downloaded onto the Circuit Playground, connect Circuit Playground to optional battery pack (or continue using a computer for power) using the cord.

3. Attach one velcro dot to the backside of the circuit playground and one velcro dot to the outside of the glove on the back of your hand.

4. That's it! Use your hand to move the circuit playground, triggering different frequencies determined by coding!

Steps for coding the Circuit Playground:

1. Open the website https://makecode.adafruit.com/.

2. Open a loop (green tab). Students can experiment with different loops, such as "forever" or "on start." By experimenting with these loops, students can get the hang of the coding and how the device functions. (See different available tabs in image 5)

3. To make the circuit musical playground active with the software students have programmed, make sure to click "download" (located bottom left side of the screen). This must happen before the circuit musical playground can do anything. Students must click download after any changes to update the instrument.

4. Click on the red Music tab to see all the different sound possibilities. (See image 5)

5. Select either the tab "play tone at _ for _," the tab "play melody _ at _," or the tab "ring tone at _" to add in notes or melodies. By clicking "play tone at _ for _," you can select a single note to play for a certain amount of beats (see images 1 and 2). By clicking "play melody _ at _," you can determine what the melody is by clicking on that segment of the code and choose the notes to play in order (see image 9). By clicking "ring tone at _," a single note of choice plays continuously (see image 8). The students can select their favorite method of sound and make the instrument their own. 

6. In order to make the circuit playground controlled by motion, open the purple "input" tab and add the code titled "on shake." (See image 6). By clicking the word shake, you can change what type of motion will trigger the sound, such as tilt up, tilt down, tilt right, tilt left, etc (see image 7).

7. Add sound codes into these brackets to make the sound controlled by motion! (See image 8).

8. Students also have the ability to add light to their musical instruments by clicking the blue "light" tab. By entering light codes into the motion-censored tabs, the colors will change with notes. (See image 9).