Proposal : Creative coding 6h program with Sonic Pi

Educators
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Hi Creative Educators!
We are planning to do a 3 days Sonic Pi (2h/day) introductional workshop for kids (15 girls and boys who are 10-12 years old ) and we need your advices! It will be our first experience with Sonic Pi and although there are a lot of information in the web maybe could you give some advices about how to guide the workshop. Our first plan is:

(2h) Day 1 - Make a song: they will learn basics concepts about coding and music.

(2h) Day 2 - From a song to a Live Performance: they will learn basics of live coding, samplesā€¦

(2h) Day 3 - DJ Performance: they should prepare a live coding performance

  • Pair programming

IMPORTANT:

  • Kids donā€™t know each other ( it will be a Christmas workshop )
  • Maybe, we donā€™t know, it will be their first programming experience

What do you think ?

Thanks so much for your help !

Best,

Xavi - @xavidominguez

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Good idea!. I did a Christmas Workshop last year and got the kids to create this:

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Wow! Itā€™s super nice! How many hour did you spend ? How old were them ? Did they know coding ? Thanks @gavin

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Thanks - basically it was just a one hour workshop at a Raspberry Pi Jam. None of the children signed up had any experience in Sonic Pi and most had no coding experience.

So (as I normally do) I started with a very simple demo of sonic pi showing how to play notes, chords and melodies and simple loops etc

I then gave half the kids the first first bar lead, and the other 1/2 the first bar bassline. Obviously when they all played them they could hear both parts but they could not play together in time on different machines.

So I then explained the concept of Live Loops and gave them the ā€˜otherā€™ voice for the first bar so they could play them together in time on their own machines.

The first bar with 2 voices was all we had time for in an an hour but I then have them the full code with all 4 voices to take home (and posted it on github).

I am not sure how many went on to complete it but I had some great feedback from parents at later events.

Here is a photo from the session. the 2 kids in Code Club t-shirts at the side of the room were from my regular club and were on hand to help the ā€˜newbiesā€™ - they did a great job :slight_smile:

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And this is the code from the initial exercise I gave them (except each child was initially given only one of the voices) :

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One thing Iā€™ve done with a few workshops is, a bit like @gavin , give the kids a working tune and an explanation of what they can do to change the tempo/synths/samples/fx. Then get them to ā€œremixā€ it by changing values, this usually ends up with some pretty cool - and bizarre - versions. Frequently featuring a lot of misc_crow.

Thereā€™s a couple of examples here of workcards I made under ā€œWorkshop Materialsā€ http://glasgow.coderdojo.co/sonicpi_intro/

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A quick update on my previous replyā€¦

We have today updated the code to work with our modular gear:

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Hello Claire. Iā€™d love to take a look at your materials for the Glasgow workshop but link appears to be broken. And Iā€™d love to chat with you about how it went, what you found that worked/didnā€™t, etc.

I teach Sonic Pi in middle school in the states, and am also preparing a workshop for CS educators in July. Happy to chat off-forum or on. Thanks!

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I like the idea of giving them a working tune. Iā€™ve seen many of my students spend most of their time just assembling a tune. Thatā€™s not as fun as the rest!

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I would very recommend giving them a working example and let them tinker with it. I teach informatics at gymnasium level (15-18 years old), and the recommended approach is Use-Modify-Create. First you give the students something that works, then you make them change it up. Throwing them out in the deep end is going to be challenging, especially with only 6 hours to spare.

You could always give them a ā€œskeletonā€ to work from. A simple structure with the bare minimum of a song, which they then expand themselves.

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@birv2 Hi Bob and Dave,

Iā€™d forgotten that that server was no more! Hereā€™s a link to a GitHub repo where Iā€™ve uploaded the worksheet and starter tunes:https://github.com/alcluith/sonic-pi-workshop
(not entirely sure why I went for writing out the note-length names in full in Running up that Hill for half of it - feel free to change it :wink: )

The workshop was designed for an adults-only evening session at Glasgow Science Centre, so the tunes may or may not be that familiar to kids/teenagers (though ā€œGet Luckyā€ and ā€œThis is what you came forā€ might be okay). There are some pics of the workshop in progress here: https://alcluith.wordpress.com/2017/06/26/eine-kleine-science-musik/

The workshop finished with a mini-Algorave using the ā€œMexican Rouletteā€ technique where the participants were given a working piece which they took it in turns to alter slightly. The piece was one Iā€™d coded, but Samā€™s examples in the Sonic Pi built-in tutorial also work well with this - my favourite is ā€œRerezzedā€). Mexican Roulette is described in more detail on page 163 of this doc https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fea7/6136a02dcd119a0217bf9322dd22901f9b09.pdf

Hope all thatā€™s useful!

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Thanks so much for sharing that. Canā€™t wait to dig into it.

Mexican Roulette sounds really intriguing and I just might steal that idea for my preso!

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Itā€™s great fun - and a good, non-intimidating way of getting the workshop participants to have a go at live-coding. (I first saw it used for this by Martin Zeilinger at a workshop day we were involved with at a London school).

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