Melody Maker

Age 3+

10 minutes

Music

Collaborative

Choose your instruments

Create a melody

Game Description

In Brief

Learning objective

Melody Maker allows the players to work creatively with music to create short melodies. They are introduced to more than 100 different instruments and how they look and sound. They can also learn how the tempo and different octaves affect a melody.

Game objective

The objective of Melody Maker is to play around with a variety of different instruments and to create a short melody.

Detailed Description

Gameplay

Melody zones

Players have control of four melody zones – three instrument zones and one drum zone, which consist of a grid. Players can create a melody by pressing on individual rectangles of the grid. Horizontally, the placement of the highlighted rectangle determines the order the notes are played in the melody (towards the left – sooner, towards the right – later). Vertically, the lower the highlighted rectangle is placed, the lower the note will be in playback. Players can also edit their melody by pressing on a highlighted rectangle which will erase it from the melody.

 

Individual Controls

Volume

With the volume adjuster tool, players can turn each zones’ volume up or down, to make certain instruments louder or quieter in the final melody.

Trash bin

Players can use the trash bin tool to erase the whole individual zone’s highlighted rectangles. Before deletion is completed, the player must confirm that they wish to delete by clicking on the pop-up checkmark.

Instrument selector

By pressing the instrument selector icon, players get to choose which instruments to use in their melody. If the small grid size is chosen, players have a selection of 15 instruments to choose from in the three instrument zones and another 15 to select six from in the drum zone. With the large grid, players can choose from 100+ available instruments.

Play button

The play button allows players to preview the melody created by the chosen instruments in each zone or all of the four zones together, which can be done by pressing all four play buttons.

Drum zone instruments

Players can choose six instruments from an available selection of 15 in the small grid setting and a selection of 45+ in the large grid setting. These instruments serve as a background rhythm to the players’ melody. The instruments are pre-selected at the beginning of the game, however, players can create a selection of their own. That is done by pressing on the instruments highlighted in blue, which deselects them by turning them grey. Then the player can select their unique set of six instruments.

Octave adjustment

To lower or heighten the octave for each of the three instrument zones, players can click on the downward or upward-facing arrows, which then will bring the highlighted notes an octave higher or lower.

Shared controls

BPM – Beats Per Minute

To adjust the speed of the melody, players can click the BPM icon and use the slider to change the speed between 10 and 240 BPM. The lower the beats per minute, the slower the notes will be played out.

Grid Size

By selecting the large grid setting, players are given the choice to customize the grid size to create their melody in. The available sizes to choose from are between 1×12 and 24×12.

Downloading the melody

If the player is satisfied with their created melody, they can download it to their device. Before that is done, the player must choose how many loops they want their melody to be played in – 1, 2, 3, 5, or 10. To choose, the player must press on their selection which will highlight it in blue and press upload. Then, a QR code will show up and the download can be made by scanning it with another device.

Detailed Description

Settings

Grid size: small or large

In the settings, the players can choose between a small or large melody grid. With the small grid, players can create a short and simple melody using a base set of instruments. By choosing the larger grid size, it is possible for players to create a more complex and slightly longer melody while having a larger selection and variety of instruments to choose from.