Public Release of Music Blocks V4.0 for Testing

Today, the developers of Music Blocks v4.0 announced an initial release of Music Blocks v4.0. This marks an important milestone its development. Music Blocks v4.0 is an entirely overhauled version of the visual programming language for music, based on the original Music Blocks, but built from the ground up in order to offer better performance (which is great for musicians), simpler design (which is great for teachers, parents, and students), and more modular features (which is good for developers).

You can try the code for yourself at https://sugarlabs.github.io/musicblocks-v4/

Test Run

You can test Music Blocks for yourself by 1) clicking </>, then 2) clicking the wrench and screwdriver icon, and lastly 3) clicking the play button. The result should be four sides of a hexagon.

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Run the code once more and it will complete the hexagon.

Current Features

The following features are currently available to test.

move-forward steps:number
move-backward steps:number
turn-left angle:number
turn-right angle:number
set-xy x:number y:number
set-heading angle:number
draw-arc radius:number
angle:number
set-color value:number
set-thickness value:number
pen-up
pen-down
set-background value:number
clear 

To see all available features, click the question mark at the bottom left of the panel to the left.

After clicking the question mark, all the available tools will appear in the editor panel.

Next Steps and How to Contribute

You may follow the development of Music Blocks v4.0 on Github and by subscribing to the Music Blocks newsletter. Music Blocks v4.0 development will most likely be one of the projects for this year’s Google Summer of Code (GSoc) with SugarLabs, so, for anyone interested in contributing to Music Blocks v4.0 for GSoC, it is recommended to join the SugarLabs mailing lists.