Prototyping Play With Your Music: Theory

I’m part of a research group at NYU called the Music Experience Design Lab. One of our projects is called Play With Your Music, a series of online interactive music courses. We’re currently developing the latest iteration, called Play With Your Music: Theory. Each module presents a “musical simple,” a short and memorable loop of melody or rhythm. Each simple is a window into one or more music theory concepts. Users can learn and play with the simples using a new interface called the aQWERTYon, which maps scales and chords to the regular computer keyboard.

aqw screengrab

We’re presenting the simples in a variety of formats, including YouTube videos, standard music notation, MIDI, data visualization, and our custom aQWERTYon notation.

Get Ur Freak On compound simple - notation

get-ur-freak-on-midi

get-ur-freak-on-circles

The goal is to teach theory through creative engagement with meaningful real-world music. We also want to put more emphasis on rhythm, which traditional music theory pedagogy tends to neglect. I’ve put some prototypes up, and I invite you to take a look and play around.

There’s a lot of work to do to make this vision a reality, and we’re looking for partners to help us do it. Specifically, here’s what we’d like to do in the coming year:

  • Create more musical simple modules, music theory
    concept pages, and instructional videos.
  • Implement a drum programming and rhythm pedagogy interface.
  • Add guitar tabs.
  • Create a database front end enabling us to offer multiple points
    of entry.
  • Build a community platform, including a system for
    crowdsourcing simples and concept pages.
  • Create course pathways for specific audiences: AP Music Theory students, lead guitarists, bedroom producers, and so on.
  • Design more interactive functionality.
  • Develop content and business partnerships.
  • Profit!

If you’d like to get involved, or you want to offer some feedback, please let me know.

Published by

Ethan Hein

Ethan Hein teaches music technology and music education at NYU and Montclair State University. He maintains an influential and widely-followed music blog at http://www.ethanhein.com/ and has also recently written for NewMusicBox, Quartz, and Slate. He is an active producer and composer, and you can listen to his recent work here: http://soundcloud.com/ethanhein Recently, musicians in eight countries created twenty recordings of his laptop orchestra composition “Divergence/Convergence” as part of a project by the Disquiet Junto, an online electronic music collective. As a founding member of the NYU Music Experience Design Lab, Ethan designs and researches new interfaces for music learning and expression.

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