Blog 4: Tech & Music Literacy

For Grade 12 Music

The Curriculum Expectations

Here's what this assessment covers under the Ontario Arts Curriculum;

A1. The Creative Process

A1.2 apply the creative process when composing and/or arranging music

A2. The Elements of Music

A2.2 manipulate the elements of music and related concepts appropriately and effectively when improvising melodies in a variety of musical forms
A2.3 apply the elements of music and related concepts appropriately and effectively when composing and/or arranging music in a variety of forms

A3. Techniques and Technologies

A3.3 use a variety of current technologies in various applications related to music, including composing, arranging, performing, and/or recording music

Short Video Demonstration

Famitracker can be downloaded from here: https://famitracker.org/

I’ve known about this program for a while but didn’t pick it up until a couple of years ago. Famitracker is a tracker-based music making program that emulates the soundchip of the original NES, and in some cases can even be used to create music for NES games for anyone who happens to still do so (Mini Wizards link here).

I’ll start this lesson off by showing a sample piece from the program, to catch students’ attention. Ask them what they think the program is, and what exactly it’s capable of. After they’ve think-pair-shared on how the program works, we can discuss for a bit what exactly the program is and how it works.

The video isn’t necessarily immutable when it comes to order of introduction of the functions of the program. Starting off with an empty instrument and inputting notes is key, but you can encourage your students to play around with usage of the triangle channel or noise channel, row highlights, tempo and speed, and maybe look at some of the sample songs that come with Famitracker as a program.

While I wouldn’t personally do this right away, you can give students a short composing assignment with this program. Using no more than 64 rows and a C00 in the function line (example shown to the side) to the automatically stop the composition at the end, make something only using the channels currently provided. All the students would have to show is that they can navigate and understand the program.

I’ve included some extra resources to better guide any sort of lesson involving this program:

Ben Burnes Famitracker Tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbGfosQHfm0&list=PLW08UHPY2AEoWhZJVfaE4tUF9jpso8KI0

The Activity

(Keyboard Image also taken from Ben Burnes' Tutorial Series)