Unit Plan for Teachers - Generative Music in Sonic Pi

Educators
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I am currently taking graduate school classes to get a second teaching certification in Computer Science (my primary certification is in music). As the final project for my Curriculum Development course, I had to develop a unit plan for a subject of my choosing. Naturally, I wanted to do something with Sonic Pi, so I decided to do a unit on creating generative music. It is meant to be a later unit in a class for beginners to coding.

The unit is posted on github. It includes detailed lesson plans with code examples, assignment sheets, lesson slides etc. I figured I’d share it here for others to take a look at. The lessons and documents are uploaded as pdfs but this link is to a Google Drive folder where each part is in its own Google Doc.

Here are the topics covered:

  1. Using Randon Events to Write a Song
  • Defining Indeterminate/Aleotoric
  • Create piece using dice rolls and coin flips
  • Recreating Dice Roll and Coin Flip piece in Sonic Pi
  1. True random vs Pseudo random
  • Using rrand_i to choose random integer from a range of numbers
  • Establish why same number is always chosen
  • Use_random_seed
  • Discuss concept of pseudo random
  • Time.now.to_i
  1. Manipulating data structures
  • Identify ways to manipulate a sequence of numbers
  • Introduce methods for manipulating data structures
  • Provide randomized input to methods
  1. Looping through data structures of different lengths
  • Identify issues with basic looping structures
  • Finding length of data structures = .length
  1. Single Line Conditional Statements
  • Single Line if statements
  • Storing randomized output in variables
  • Dice Roll simulation
  • Out of Class Assignment Roll Out
  1. Nested Conditionals
  • Intro to Nested Conditionals
  • Probability
  • one_in() function
  1. Random Durations
  • Note Duration
  • Sample Rate

8-11. Final Project - Generative Music

  • Defining Generative Music
  • Assignment Roll Out
  • In Class Work Time
  • Gallery Walk
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@mrbombmusic - just had a closer look at the repository - It may or may not be too late notice now to be useful, but I saw that in this file:

You use code similar to the following:

seq = (ring, ...)

To me, it seems like the comma after ring is unnecessary. It works fine without one there :slight_smile: - up to you whether you feel it’s worth removing them though :+1:

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Just realizing the github link to the unit plan is no longer working and the post is too old for me to edit so I’m just posting an updated link: GitHub - mrbombmusic/currdev_unit_plan-sonic-pi-gen-music: currdev_unit_plan-sonic-pi-gen-music created by GitHub Classroom

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Under probability, you might want to include spread too. To choose 3 in ten, you can just say spread(3, 10).pick – well worth knowing, and pretty easy.
Have fun!