Coderplay

The Music Theory Quiz Widget has been released through Apple Dashboard.

This was created from a JavaScript quiz script I wrote in 2005 and edited into a widget by Rosie Williams. Rosie also collaborated on the orginal design and educational aspects. Rosie, along with my grandmother, taught me music theory/composition and practice between the ages 5 and 12, up to and including grade 5 theory (AMEB) along with many other subjects.

I put aside my music when I embarked on university studies in programming at age 12 but my old compositions are still around.

There’s also a four part harmony flow chart on the old site that I created to describe the process of cadence writing. This might be of some use to music students.

Announcing the release of our new Music Theory Widget for the Apple Dashboard and the re-release of our Online Cadence Companion (formerly 4 part harmony checker).

The Music Theory Widget is aimed at students attempting grades 3-6 of the Australian Music Examination Board music theory and musicianship exams, senior high school students or early college music students. It is for Apple Mac dashboard only.

The widget holds four quizes in multiple choice form:
Relative Keys Quiz – match the relative key of all major keys.
Italian Terms – all 60 grades 3 and 4 (AMEB) Italian terms.
Melody – 20 questions approximating grades 4-5 (AMEB) theory level testing knowlege of mordants, trills and other decorations; and the basics of melodic progression.
Harmony – 30 questions approximating grade s 4-5 (AMEB) or for those studying William Lovelock’s harmony text books. Questions cover cadences, rules of harmonic progression and terminology.

The Online Cadence Companion is an interactive web application which allows the student of composition to check their cadences (perfect, imperfect, interrupted, plagal) and hear them sound. The cadence checker provides instant output of any errors in harmonic progression (eg parts not within range of each SATB; omitting the third; consecutive/parallel octaves or fifths. This should work in all major browsers with Java and JavaScript enabled.

Assuming you have ffmpeg installed (with mp3 encoding/decoding enabled [see below for more info]), and the video downloaded off Youtube using DownloadHelper, this line will extract the audio from the video into an mp3:

ffmpeg -i <filename>.flv -ab 320000 audio.mp3

Note that DownloadHelper usually takes a little while after clicking download to start getting the file, so if it looks like it’s not working, just wait.

I had some issues with getting mp3 to work with ffmpeg on OS X, so here’s how to get it to work. Note this is from memory, so please let me know if this works or not.

Download and extract the OS X Intel/PPC zip from http://spaghetticode.org/lame/; go to the directory for the zip file and then go to package/usr/local/lib; copy libmp3lame.dylib to /usr/local/lib.

Then get the source to ffmpeg, cd into the source directory and run ./configure --enable-libmp3lame, then make and sudo make install.

That will build a copy of ffmpeg that can create mp3 files.

I wrote this Four Part Harmony Checker several years ago as part of a much larger project involving an extensive array of online quizzes, games and activities aimed at teaching the theory of music.

The Four Part Harmony/Chord Checker is for music theory students who are learning how to write cadences in four parts (SATB). The checker allows you to set the key, inversion, chord and the notes appropriate to the cadence you have defined in either major or minor keys. It then sounds and checks the cadence for mistakes such as an omitted third or consecutive fifths. The tool uses a Java applet which may need to mouse over to hear the cadence sound and scroll down to check the errors you have made in your cadence writing.

The below is a work in progress, it’s bits and pieces I made up while on holiday:

Hey hey hello
Welcome to the show
I want you to know
Some more about me

This shit, I did not plan it
This skill, you wish you had it
Brain the size of a planet
Mind so wide you couldn’t span it

Brawn, I have not much,
however I’ve still more than Munch,
So you can’t beat me to the punch,
I do have a sizable paunch,
What can I say, I like to munch.

I say brains over

Listen to this verse,
or you’ll end up in a hearse,
heed my warning, when you’re roaming, in the gloaming, you can’t be knowing,
when a creep comes crawling, he’ll be informing, he’ll be probing, about your political past,
what colour, what caste; then he’ll wax vast, selling sutures, educational futures, putrid papers.
Listen not to this man, telling you his plan. He’s the devil in disguise, Satan’s behind his eyes,
telling you lies, his eye’s on the prize, which is your demise. He’ll cut petrol prices, which seems like good news, but there’s danger in his views, making you all fools. Watch out for this man, don’t let him sell his plan, with his watering can. Petrol will go down, but it’s your grandkids that’ll drown, in the promises of a clown, made under false pretenses, an act indecent, without precedent. Gotta laser beam it, cut through his words of credence, see through his political ties.

Chorus:

You can see him perspiring, his eyes always prying, implying, denying, never inspiring, his plans backfiring.

He wants not dreams but not the gleam of poker machines.

… his paper vows, so get the paper towels and let’s cut this pretense of his defence, get off the fence!