Japan Travels Continued (Kyoto)

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Devin’s Travels to Kyoto with Music Blocks

Devin presents the fundamentals of Music Blocks to coordinators of Pangaean

Devin was invited by the organization, “Pangaean” to do a Music Blocks workshop for them at Kyoto University. Students that are a part of Pangaean meet once a month at Kyoto University for special workshops. They were kind enough to invite Devin to do a workshop with the kids as part of their monthly activities for December.

Devin prepares laptops for the workshop at Pangaean.

Devin met with the mentors before the workshop and explained to them how the program works. Together with staff members he prepared all of the computers to run Music Blocks.

Devin presents the fundamentals of Music Blocks to coordinators of Pangaean

Simple demonstrations were shown.

Devin presents the fundamentals of Music Blocks to coordinators of Pangaean
Devin presents the fundamentals of Music Blocks to coordinators of Pangaean

Before the workshop began, Devin showed Music Blocks software to the students as well as some example programs.

Once the students started using the program, they started to ask questions. It took a little bit of time to get a good foundation, but once the kids got the hang of it they made a lot of progress. The work that the students did was impressive.

One student created a simple, fundamental harmonic progression. (link to Music Blocks code) (Run live online)
Other students transcribed traditional Japanese melodies. (link to Towa-chan’s project) (Run Towa-chan’s project live online) (link to student transcription of “Tulip”) (Run “Tulip” live)
A student explored solfege by transcribing the beginning of the “Do-Re-Mi” song. (link to Music Blocks code) (Run live online)
Some students chose to make new musical compositions with Music Blocks.
Note for links: Please download the link as html, run Music Blocks in your browser, and drag the .html file into the browser tab running Music Blocks.

Devin gives an overview of the basics to the students before the workshop begins.

At the end of the workshop, students were given USB sticks with a copy of the Music Blocks software code. The students seemed to genuinely enjoy receiving something, which I have been calling a “digital omiyage”, which roughly translates to “a digital gift (typically brought from afar).

Overall, the students accomplished a lot even within the limited time. Adults who observed the workshop commented on how they were surprised that the students seemed to achieve their objectives even within the inherent complexities of music, programming, and math, which is the framework of Music Blocks. They said that the kids really picked up the skills needed very quickly and well. I agree. For the first fifteen minutes, I was worried whether or not the students were picking up the concepts, but when I heard the music coming from the laptops I understood that they were picking it up just fine.