[Project Description] Visualizing Music

Visualizing Music: Children’s Creativity Developing Music Tool 

Client Representative:

Jiyoung Lee, Faculty, ETC-SV

Project Description:

Children have great pride in their own work and learn many things with their own experience.  Children showcase their creativity by writing stories, making art, building Lego, making cupcakes, etc. How about creating music?

This project aims to create a music tool that builds children’s (age 8+) creativity. This tool will bring out children’s natural curiosity and sense of adventure to create new ideas through the world of music.

The goal is to create a music visualization application in tablet devices (or smartphones) equipped with microphones. When children sing or hum a song into the microphone, the tool generates a pitch graph and shows it on the screen. The tool then translates the pitch graph to music notations with the proper calculated time and key signatures.

The children learn about music notation, and can edit their creations to learn more about music composition. The children can play back their own melody or even build their accompaniment out of the melody. For the advanced level, the children should be able to edit or move the notes using the touch screen if they want to change a note.

The design of the tool should focus on the following areas for the children:

• ·       Have fun with music
• ·       Be able to think of new musical ideas.  
• ·       Be able to understand and make music. 
• ·       Instantly listen to the music they created; Immediate feedback from what they created.
• ·       Learn basic music notation including staff, notes, key/time signature. 
• ·       Feel ownership of the music they created.
• ·       Share the music they created with their family and friends.

Deliverable/Artifact to be created:

The deliverable should be a development of music software that helps children to be creative and to have fun with music.

Team:

Producer:  A natural leader who has the vision of the big picture and also pays attention to details. Must have good organization skills, project management skills, and communication skills. Preferably has passion for both music and education.

Designer: A person that creates the content of the tool. Must work well with the entire team and should have excellent written and communication skills. Must love music and read music notes. Music composition experience is required.

Programmer1 (Engineer): Strong programmer with experience in app development for tablets. No music background required but should love music and education. Familiarity with Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), signal processing and other related audio processing technique is a plus.

Programmer2 (User Interface): Strong user interface programmer. Works well with the game designer, artists and other programmers to implement efficient UI systems.

Artist/ UI designer: Outstanding 2D digital artist. Talented user interface designer/artist. Works closely with the designers to create the interface, including navigation, menu options, player modes and instrument selection.

Intellectual Property:

Students will own their intellectual property created during this project, but Carnegie Mellon University will have the right and license to display, modify and use all intellectual property and work product resulting from this project for academic, educational, administrative and/or research purposes.

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