Music In Three Dimensions: Lindsey Bross

Music in Three Dimensions Lindsey Bross

Description In this course, students will express their musical creativity in three dimensions with the help of 3D printing! Students will be introduced to Tinkercad, a user-friendly design program, through a project-based approach. These projects include (but are not limited to): ● ● ● ● ● ●

Turn it Up and Down (designing and making amplifiers/dampeners), Making Noise (designing and printing mouthpieces and other instruments), Producing Sound (using recording clips of the 3D printers in action to create original music), Feeling the Music (creating textures with 3D printing and then interpreting them into music), Adapting Art (using 3D printing to create adaptive accessories for music making), and Scoring in 3D (creating a printed score for a class composition that can be attached to the MaKey MaKey and played by parents and students alike.

Description and Rationale This class is centered around the concept of understanding through project-based learning (detailed in Tobias, Campbell, and Greco’s 2013 article on the matter). Students are constructing their musical ideas in 3D, and in each unit, they’ll be tasked with figuring out the best way to make their ideas a reality. Through the medium of 3D printing, students will be challenged to look at music and how it’s created in new and innovative ways. Since 3D printers often go awry, they’ll also have the added challenge of working with an ill-structured problem as they troubleshoot not only their designs, but learn how to troubleshoot the printer as well.

Turn it Up and Down What is sound? How do we create it? What sounds best to us? How can we shape sound?

Making Noise What kind of instruments or instrument parts can we 3D print? Which would be most effective?

Printer