1. Become a Music Maker

Hey and welcome to day 3 of Scratch Music! Today, you're going to learn more computer science so you can build a musical art display like the one you see here. When someone uses your musical artwork, they will be able to move the mouse around to discover the different sounds that each color of the artwork will make. For this project, you will use conditionals, or "If then" blocks, to tell the computer what sound to play for each color. You will create instructions that say, for example, "if the mouse is touching green play a C note."

Computer Science is a tool that can be used to build whatever you imagine in many different forms. In these videos, you'll see artists who have used some computer science skills to program innovative and interactive musical displays for others to enjoy.

As you could probably guess from those videos, there were lots of "if then" statements used for behavior like, "If the person touches the bike, then play a sound." Sometimes, it looks like a computer is deciding what to do all by itself, but in reality, every decision a computer makes was programmed by a computer scientist just like you using statements that say "If this happens then do a certain action." You'll use several of these today to tell the computer what note to play if a color is touched in your art.

In this first screencast, you're going to sign in to scratch and open the starter project.

To open the starter project, click the link next to this screencast that says, "Musical art: Starter Project." Then, click "remix." Next, you'll see a box where you will enter your Scratch sign-in information. Completing that step will create and save a copy of the Musical art starter project to your Scratch account.

Take a look at this example interactive music display for today's project. When the start flag is clicked, the circles randomly fill the screen with color. When the mouse touches a green circle, one note plays. But, when the mouse touches a blue circle, a different note plays. The project creates the art, but it requires a person to interact with it to make music, just like those you saw in the intro videos. The notes you choose choose will change the feel of your project and make it your own. ou'll also get the chance to further customize the project in the add ons. Now it’s your turn. Open the starter project link on this page and then sign in to Scratch.

Once you’ve finished this step, return to this CS First page and click the green arrow to move on to the next screencast.