Patogenia

The most significant change to Graphick

Score during this phase was influenced by

Bamberger’s concept of tune-blocks, which

are used in the pedagogic composing

software Impromptu (see 3.2.3). In this

programme, which is aimed at pre-school age children, the user arranges tune-blocks into a recognisable melody. The idea of arranging recognisable structures is a

common feature in sandbox games, such as Minecraft and Lego (see 3.3), and I also

recognised the relevance to Papert’s objects-to-think-with (see 2.1.4). Therefore, I decided to

incorporate tune-blocks into Graphick Score, to see if pupils of my target age group could

arrange these scaffolding structures on the canvas window, and what influence this might have on creative exploration compared to the previous study.

Tune-blocks were formed by dynamically generating a pattern of multiple geos at positions relative to the cursor, so that the user could create a block of geos starting anywhere on the canvas window (Figure 6.14). A list of melodic fragments was accessible via the graphics menu, which the user could ‘stamp’ onto the canvas window. Upon selection of a tune-block, the suggested line was highlighted; i.e. if the first note of the fragment began on the tonic, this line became bolder than the others. The user could then choose to place the fragment on this line, or on another line, allowing more complex structures to be formed from these fragments (Figure 6.15). Various nursery rhymes, popular songs, folk songs, and

melodies from children’s films were included in the list at different stages. Block and broken chords were also later added (Figure 6.16).

Figure 6.14 – A tune-block for the song Oh When the Saints

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Figure 6.15 – A sequence generated using the tune-block shown in Figure 6.14

113 Tune-blocks (see 3.2.4) were also added as a way of making

rhythmic patterns. Fruits with names corresponding to the rhythmic pattern were used for the menu (Figure 6.17; 6.18). Initially, these menus were text-based, but later became populated by cycling images (see 7.1).

6.4.2 Editing Tune-blocks

Following these changes to the interface, any block of geos (including drawn lines) could be selected by dragging across a region using the right mouse button. A white rectangle is displayed around the selected geos, forming a new tune-block. This block can be edited in a number of ways: moved, copied, deleted, resized (altering the dynamics), sent to a new MIDI channel (changing the instrument), and flipped or rotated. The latter function is perhaps the most musically interesting of these possibilities; when a region of geos is selected, all the relative positions are calculated within a sub-patch, allowing them to be repositioned along the Y or X axis, generating horizontal and vertical mirror images. By combining this with the copying and moving functions, a single tune-block can produce several variations (Figure 6.19). These changes generate the possibility for motivic development; a segment of ‘drawn’ music can be isolated and manipulated, producing retrograde, inversion and sequence among other gestural compositional devices; this is a feature lacking in other compositional

environments (see 3.2.4).

Figure 6.18 – Fruit rhythms Figure 6.17 – Fruit rhythms making the rhythmic sequence for ‘pat-a-

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Figure 6.19 – Rotations of the tune-block shown in Figure 6.14

6.4.3 Other Developments

Later versions of the instrument menu further simplified the layout. The VST instruments were removed to focus on the 16 MIDI output channels. These could be assigned to any MIDI output device, though the general MIDI instrument set was given as a default (Figure 6.20). A basic structural sequencer was added at this stage, allowing a sequence of 16 scenes to be programmed.

Figure 6.20 – The instrument menu

Various changes made at this stage were aimed at making the interface more user-friendly, following commonly-observed mistakes when using the programme. For example, when the user tries to draw in the canvas window without an instrument selected, a message box directs them to the instrument menu instead (Figure 6.21). One other significant change in this version was the

removal of a geo selector, as this had become too much of a focal point in the previous study, and I hoped that a selector based upon musical content would provide different results. Instead, a simple geo was assigned to each MIDI channel, along with a default colour, though this could still be changed. The 3-dimensional model files were not included in this version, as I found that rendering large quantities of these objects placed great demand on the CPU, and often led to playback issues and errors. I therefore decided to return to more advanced

Figure 6.21 – A message directs the user to select a channel

115 graphics at a later date, when some more efficient application could be found. At this time, it was clear that to use these complex graphics for single note events was an inefficient use of memory and processing power, but that their appeal demanded that they be reintroduced for some other purpose at a later date.

6.5 Focus Group at School A, May 2016