Making More Music

Making More Music is the second CD-ROM in the Making Music series from composer Morton Subotnick.  Available for both Mac and Windows on one CD-ROM, Making More Music presents an exciting opportunity for students to create their own music and to learn basic principles of composition.

The program is divided into a number of sections, with a composition space called “Chamber Music” as the focus.  Students can use the Chamber Music section to create their own compositions.  There is a composition space for four or five instruments, with a palette of tools on one side.  Each instrument’s part has a grid similar to graph paper.  Students can use the paint brush tool to paint notes into the grid – hearing the notes as they place them.  In addition to painting “free-hand” students can create in “real-time” by having the program move the brush forward at a steady tempo as they paint.

Once you have painted some music, you can copy and paste to extend your creation.  You can also apply a number of effects to your music – such as inversion, retrograde, diminution, and changes in dynamics and tempo.  Each effect is represented on the palette by a suitable icon – visually representing the effect.  An “undo” features allows students to reverse each effect, and note can be added or removed at any time.

The composition book acts as a virtual scrapbook where students can save their ideas for future playback, or use in other compositions.

One of the most exciting features of the Chamber Music section is the ability to instantaneously transform your doodling into standard notation – and back, at the push of a button.  After painting a musical idea, students can immediately see what it would look like as standard notation.  Once satisfied with their creation, students can print the music out in standard notation to be performed or shared with their classmates and family.

In addition to the main Chamber Music area, there are a number of other sections to assist students in creating music.  The Rhythm Band helps to develop rhythms, allowing students to experiment with nine different percussion instruments.  The Theme and Variation section presents classic examples to teach the fundamentals of musical variation.   Different musical pieces are broken down into building blocks which students can use to create a new twist on old favorites, or to be used as original scores in their own compositions.

As in Making Music, there are games to reinforce and test the musical knowledge presented throughout the program.  In addition to all of these activities, Subotnick has included a very informative section in which he demonstrates compositional techniques using examples that are accessible to students of any age.  Although it is tucked away in a corner of the program, this section is one of the most valuable tools for helping students understand the compositional process.  Through the video and animation, students can see a composer in action, as he develops musical ideas into a full composition.

Making More Music strives to be user-friendly and allow students to work with as little teacher intervention as possible.  To support this goal, every section has extensive on-line help where students can hear and read about how to use the program.  It is especially useful to be able to see and hear descriptions of how to use the tools.  This ease of use allows the program to be used independently of teacher instruction or interaction.  As a result, students can work with the program in small groups on their own – useful for situations where you don’t have access to a lab of computers.

One of the few complaints I have against Making More Music is the inability to transfer compositions to other music programs.  Although Making More Music will let you save your compositions and print them out, it will not allow you to export them as standard MIDI files to be shared on the Internet, or opened into other programs.

Despite this drawback, this program is an excellent tool for developing student creativity in a thoughtful, effective manner.  Given that it is under $50, this should become a very popular addition to any teacher’s software library.

(c) 2003, Kelly's Music & Computers.