Lab 14: Back to the 80s

Outline

In this lab you will:

create your own sequence with an arpeggio
combine your sequence with at least one of your peers’
perform your composition and take us back to the 80s or somewhere stranger

Introduction

This week you have the option to partake in one of two activities. You can either create a dance anthem or create a stranger things inspired composition.

What do these options involve?

Dance anthem of the 80s
1. You will come up with a single rhythm pattern on your own
2. Setup one of the synths in Tone.js to play that pattern
3. Come together in pairs or threes with other students who have their heart set on creating the next dance anthem
4. With the help you your instructor, workshop on layering each of your rhythms into one rich rhythm section. We’ll all gather around a whiteboard and discuss how best to layer the rhythms and how to implement our final rhythm section in Tone.js
5. We will write the code on one person’s machine and perform it for the class at the end
6. sonic inspiration comes in many different flavours indeed!
Inspired by Stranger Things
1. In this activity you will work in pairs (or threes if we have an odd number of participants)
2. Your task is to come up with a composition based on a 5 note arpeggio¹ like the one in the Stranger Things theme
3. Work with your partner to decide which parts of the piece you will come up with.
4. If you’re up for it, you can perform your piece in front of the class :)

do: Fork and clone the gitlab template repo for this week. This builds on the last 2 weeks, so you may find it useful to open your template repo from last 2 weeks.

Option #1: Dance anthem of the 80s

Step One

As a first step, create an instrument that makes a percussion sound. You might remember that percussion instruments have very short Attack, Decay and Release times, with low levels (or even zero) of Sustain (remember the Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release envelopes from last week). Feel free to use any instruments you created in the last 2 weeks.

Step Two

Come up with a single rhythm of your own by creating a sequence (an array of pitches). You can play this using

a Loop in Tone.js (you should already have a loop set up in your code from week 12).
a Sequence in Tone.js (you should already have a loop set up in your code from week 12).
a Pattern in Tone.js (this is great for ¹s) - you will find one setup in the template repo for this week

You should play your rhythm sequence using the instrument you created in Step One. Since we are working with rhythms, you don’t necessarily have to select more than one pitch. For rests (a duration of silence), you can create these by

For Loops: Using the pitch (0Hz) in your array of pitches
For Sequences: Using an empty array [] in your array of notes
For Patterns: Using the pitch “0Hz”, like for Loop, or an empty array [] like for Sequences

talk: Your instructor will ask you to gather in front of the whiteboard and you will all work together to layer your rhythms together. Start by drawing your rhythm on the whiteboard. Have a discussion about how the rhythms fit together – will you need to modify any of the rhythms or the instruments they are played on?. Then we will discuss how to implement the sequences and play them together in Tone.js. This will again be done as a group, but one person will need to lend their laptop to act as “scribe”.

Option #2: Extra Strangeness

do: Find someone to collaborate with – preferably someone you haven’t worked with before. You and your partner are going to work together to come up with a composition inspired by Stranger Things. You only need to write the code on one person’s laptop, but this is a collaboration, so it’s important that you work together to implement your ideas. If you need help finding a partner, let one of your instructors know :)

Step One

Listen to the Stranger Things theme: - what elements can you hear? - a low pitch synth with a tight ADSR envelope can sound a lot like a drum/bass - There are some drone like sounds in the background? Can you modulate attributes of an oscillator or a single pitch on a synth using an LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator) to recreate this? - Anything else you can think of?

Step Two

Decide which elements of the song you will each implement. All we ask is that you have at least one arpeggio playing on one of the synths, in classic Stranger-Things-Theme fashion. Feel free to use any instruments you created last week.

Step 3: What to include in your blog post?

Dance Anthem or Something Stranger? We all need to write a blog post.

You will be discussing what you created in class in your blog post which is due at 17:00 next Wednesday.

A reminder that we are not assessing the “quality” of the work you present in the blog post.

The blog posts are just a way for you to regularly “sketch” with code and reflect on your work. If you didn’t perform anything in class this week, or the music you came up with was nowhere near what you wanted it to sound like, that is totally ok! You can keep working on it in your own time :) The important thing is that you talk about what you did try and what you might like to try if you had more time.

Screenshots and/or screen recordings

We want to see the thing! Reference at least one recording of your performance. If you choose to perform your piece, your instructors will upload recordings of your group’s performance to the cc-blog channel on Teams. Please include the name of your group in your blog post and link to the performance recording. If you choose not to perform, just upload an audio recording of your piece (as an attachment) with your blog post (approx 30-60 seconds long).

Discussion / Context

We want to read the thing! Write a short paragraph which covers the following discussion points:

Which activity did you choose to participate in? Dance anthem of the 80s or inspired by Stranger Things, and why?
What did you find challenging about the activity you chose to participate in?
Did you run into any limitations while trying to implement your ideas with Tone.js?
What was your favourite thing about the piece you created?
What would you change about your piece if you had more time?
What are the main things you learned about music and/or coding through this activity?

Summary

Congratulations! In this lab you:

created your own sequence
combined your sequence with at least one of your peers’
performed your compositions, taking us back to the 80s

an arpeggio is where we play a chord, except instead of playing all the notes in the chord at the same time, we climb from one note to the other in ascending order and then climb back down in descending order. Have a listen to the Stranger Things theme linked above. ↩ ↩²