UMass Lowell Dept. of Computer Science
COMP 2120 / MUED 2120 — Sound Thinking
Spring 2016 Semester, Section 201
Prof. Jesse M. Heines and Prof. Gena Greher
Assignment No. 5
Creating a Composition Based on Major Seconds and Perfect Fifths
Date Due:
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Contents
What This Assignment Is About
This assignment extends your work with Scratch into the use of MIDI. You are to create a MIDI composition that conforms to the parameters enumerated below. Please be sure to read these carefully!
A Reminder About Timing
As before, we do not expect you to get the timing perfect in this assignment. However, as discussed in class, you can improve the timing considerably if you remember to set Turbo mode as discussed in class and shown again below.
In Scratch 1.4, the Turbo Speed option is a suboption under Edit->Set Single Stepping...
In Scratch 2.0, the Turbo Mode option is at the top level of the Edit menu
Partner Assignments
Top
Please see the Class Roster for your partner’s email address.
Team
No. |
Partner 1 |
Partner 2 |
What You Are To Do
Top
- Remember that all aspects of this project except your reflection are to be done with your partner.
- Using the pitch class “C” (MIDI note value 60 in Scratch) as your starting point, create a melodic composition based on the intervals of major seconds and perfect fifths AND their inversions (minor 7ths and perfect 4ths).
READ THE NEXT SENTENCE VERY CAREFULLY!
>>> These are the *** ONLY FOUR *** intervals that you may use in your composition.
READ THE PREVIOUS SENTENCE AGAIN!
- At this point we are only concerned with a viable single line melodic-composition. You need not include an accompaniment, but you may create a simple rhythmic accompaniment if you wish.
- Your Scratch composition should demonstrate your understanding of how to create loops, use variables, and add comments to identify major sections and explain what your code is doing.
- Make sure that your composition has a title and displays your name.
- As you work, write notes on what you did so that someone else (or even yourself a few months from now) can reproduce what you did. Take notes on things that you did and then undid, too, so that you do not forget the things you tried that you don’t feel worked out well.
- Give your composition a title and, if you’re working in Scratch 2.0, save it to the Scratch website by opening the File menu and selecting Save now option. Then open the File menu again and select the Go to My Stuff option. Next, click the Share button to make your project visible to others.
If you’re working in Scratch 1.4, you will simply upload your Scratch file to the Google Drive folder created for this purpose (see below).
- In Scratch 2.0, click the project title to go back to your project.
- Write down the URL of the page you end up on. This is the URL that you must submit with your reflection so that we can get to your project to grade it.
- Answer the reflective questions in the Google Form at:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1piIzMHuEWMJnNc3H5pVvXgZ7fGeMjljFyERWtOSohOk/viewform
To improve your grade, look over our comments on your responses to the reflective questions for our previous assignments. This is the only individual part of the assignment. Everything else is to be done with your partner(s).
Submitting Your Assignment for Grading
Top
For this assignment you and your partner are to submit one Scratch program. This may be the URL of your saved program on the Scratch 2.0 website entered into the text box for Question 1 on the reflection form, or a Scratch 1.4 program uploaded to the Assignment No. 5 File Submissions folder in the umlsoundthinking2016 account. If you submit a URL, both partners should simply submit the same one, and please copy-and-paste the URL from your browser window rather than typing it yourself to ensure that it is correct.
EACH of you is then to complete the Google Form at the URL shown in step 10 above.
- this is the individual part of the assignment, except that (as noted above) there are fields that all partners must fill out with the same URLs
- this form will give us all the information about your team that we need to grade your assignment
- this form is also where you will enter your responses to the reflective questions
How You Will Be Graded
Top
The two parts of this assignment will be evaluated on the following criteria.
- For the Program (15 points)
- Is your composition **ONLY** made up of 2nds and 5ths and their inversions?
- Does your composition play as intended?
- Is your program as short as possible?
- Did you compensate for some of the major timing issues?
- Did you add comments to the program to identify the major sections?
- For the Notes on what you did (5 points)
- Clarity — Could someone else reproduce your work from your notes?
- Comprehensiveness — Could you yourself reproduce your own work 6 months from now?
- For your responses to the Reflective Questions (5 points)
- Thoroughness — Did
you think about the various aspects of this assignment and their relation to music and computing?
- Effort — Did you leave this until the last minute or is it clear that you thought about what you wanted to write and put some effort into doing the writing?
- Professionalism — Was your writing and its formatting, grammar, spelling, etc. done professionally?
