Tag Archives: music

Code to the beat of your own drum during Black History Month 2023

Post Syndicated from Kevin Johnson original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/coding-projects-black-history-month-2023/

When we think about a celebration, we also think about how important it is to be intentional about sound. And with this month of February being a celebration of Black history in the USA, we want to help you make some noise to amplify the voices, experiences, and achievements of the Black community.

Two young people using laptops at a Code Club session.

From the past and present, to those still to come in the future, countless remarkable achievements have been made by Black individuals who have chosen to move to the beat of their own drum. Music and sound can be tools to tell stories, to express ourselves, to promote change, to celebrate, and so much more. So take some time this month to make your own music with your young coders and start dancing.                

A young person smiles while using a laptop.
Two young people share their Scratch project on a laptop.

Of course, choosing to dance is not the same as choosing to devote your life to the equality and freedom of all people. But it reminds us that you can incite change by choosing to do what is right, even when you feel like you’re the only one moving to the music. It won’t be long before you see change and meet people you resonate with, and a new sound will develop in which everyone can find their rhythm.

So join us this month as we explore the power of code and music to celebrate Black History Month.

Projects to help you find your rhythm

We’ve selected three of our favourite music-related projects to help you bring a joyful atmosphere to your coding sessions this month. All of the projects are in Scratch, a programming language that uses blocks to help young people develop their confidence in computer programming while they experiment with colours and sounds to make their own projects.  

Drum star | Scratch

Find your rhythm with this clicker game where you earn points by playing the drums in different venues. The project is one of our Explore projects and it includes step-by-step instructions to help young creators develop their skills, confidence, and interest in programming. This makes it a great option for beginners who want to get started with Scratch and programming.

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Music maker | Scratch

Code to the beat of your own drum — or any instrument you like. Use this project to create your own virtual musical instrument and celebrate a Black musician you admire. For young people who have some experience with Scratch, they may enjoy expressing themselves with this Design project. Our Design projects give young people support to build on their experience to gain more independence coding their own ideas.

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Binary hero | Scratch

Can you keep up with the beat? Prove it in this game where you play the notes of a song while they scroll down the screen. You could choose to include a song associated with a moment in Black history that is meaningful to you. This project is a great opportunity for young people to expand their programming knowledge to create lists, while they also test their reaction skills with a fun game.

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For young creators who want to create projects that don’t involve music or sound, check out these projects which can help you to:

Let us know how you’re celebrating Black History Month in your community on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram all month long!

Black stories to inspire you to move

Learn about our partnership with Team4Tech and Kenya Connect, with whom we are empowering educators and students in rural Kenya to use the power of coding and computing to benefit their communities.

A young person uses a computer.
  • I Belong in Computer Science: Salome Tirado Okeze

Meet Salome, a computer science student from the UK who shares her experiences and advice for young people interested in finding out where computer science can lead them. Salome was one of the first people we interviewed for our ‘I belong’ campaign to celebrate young role models in computer science.

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Research to help set the tone  

We believe that creating inclusive and equitable learning environments is essential to supporting all young people to see computer science as an opportunity for them. To help engage young people, especially those who are underrepresented in computer science classrooms, we are carrying out research with teachers to make computing culturally relevant. Our work promoting culturally relevant pedagogy in educational settings in England has been impacted by projects of many US researchers who have already contributed heavily to this area. You can learn about two of these projects in this blog post.

Educators who want to find out how they can use culturally relevant pedagogy with their learners can download our free guidelines today.

An educator explains a computing concept to a learner.

We would also like to invite you to our monthly research seminar on 7 February 2023, when we will be joined by Dr Jean Salac who will be sharing their research on Moving from equity to justice in computing instruction for youth. Dr Salac’s session is part of our current series of seminars that centres on primary school (K–5) teaching and learning of computing. The seminars are free and open to everyone interested in computing education. We hope to see you there! 

I want to register for the seminar

The post Code to the beat of your own drum during Black History Month 2023 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid in Concert

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/12/friday-squid-blogging-squid-in-concert.html

Squid is performing a concert in London in February.

If you don’t know what their music is like, try this or this or this.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Read my blog posting guidelines here.

$23 Million YouTube Royalties Scam

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/08/23-million-youtube-royalties-scam.html

Scammers were able to convince YouTube that other peoples’ music was their own. They successfully stole $23 million before they were caught.

No one knows how common this scam is, and how much money total is being stolen in this way. Presumably this is not an uncommon fraud.

While the size of the heist and the breadth of the scheme may be very unique, it’s certainly a situation that many YouTube content creators have faced before. YouTube’s Content ID system, meant to help creators, has been weaponized by bad faith actors in order to make money off content that isn’t theirs. While some false claims are just mistakes caused by automated systems, the MediaMuv case is a perfect example of how fraudsters are also purposefully taking advantage of digital copyright rules.

YouTube attempts to be cautious with who it provides CMS and Content ID tool access because of how powerful these systems are. As a result, independent creators and artists cannot check for these false copyright claims nor do they have the power to directly act on them. They need to go through a digital rights management company that does have access. And it seems like thieves are doing the same, falsifying documents to gain access to these YouTube tools through these third parties that are “trusted” with these tools by YouTube.

Automatically tune your guitar with Raspberry Pi Pico

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/automatically-tune-your-guitar-with-raspberry-pi-pico/

You sit down with your six-string, ready to bash out that new song you recently mastered, but find you’re out of tune. Redditor u/thataintthis (Guyrandy Jean-Gilles) has taken the pain out of tuning your guitar, so those of us lacking this necessary skill can skip the boring bit and get back to playing.

Before you dismiss this project as just a Raspberry Pi Pico-powered guitar tuning box, read on, because when the maker said this is a fully automatic tuner, they meant it.

How does it work?

Guyrandy’s device listens to the sound of a string being plucked and decides which note it needs to be tuned to. Then it automatically turns the tuning keys on the guitar’s headstock just the right amount until it achieves the correct note.

Genius.

If this were a regular tuning box, it would be up to the musician to fiddle with the tuning keys while twanging the string until they hit a note that matches the one being made by the tuning box.

It’s currently hardcoded to do standard tuning, but it could be tweaked to do things like Drop D tuning.

Pico automatic guitar tuner
Waiting for that green light

Upgrade suggestions

Commenters were quick to share great ideas to make this build even better. Issues of harmonics were raised, and possible new algorithms to get around it were shared. Another commenter noticed the maker wrote their own code in C and suggested making use of the existing ulab FFT in MicroPython. And a final great idea was training the Raspberry Pi Pico to accept the guitar’s audio output as input and analyse the note that way, rather than using a microphone, which has a less clear sound quality.

These upgrades seemed to pique the maker’s interest. So maybe watch this space for a v2.0 of this project…

Shred, Otto, shred

(Watch out for some spicy language in the comments section of the original reddit post. People got pretty lively when articulating their love for this build.)

Inspiration

This project was inspired by the Roadie automatic tuning device. Roadie is sleek but it costs big cash money. And it strips you of the hours of tinkering fun you get from making your own version.

All the code for the project can be found here.

The post Automatically tune your guitar with Raspberry Pi Pico appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi makes LEGO minifigures play their own music

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-makes-lego-minifigures-play-their-own-music/

We shared Dennis Mellican’s overly effective anti-burglary project last month. Now he’s back with something a whole lot more musical and mini.

Inspiration

Dennis was inspired by other jukebox projects that use Raspberry Pi, NFC readers, and tags to make music play. Particularly this one by Mark Hank, which we shared on the blog last year. The video below shows Dennis’s first attempt at creating an NFC Raspberry Pi music player, similar to Mark’s.

LEGO twist

After some poking around, Dennis realised that the LEGO Dimensions toy pad is a three-in-one NFC reader with its own light show. He hooked it up to a Raspberry Pi and developed a Python application to play music when LEGO Dimension Minifigures are placed on the toy pad. So, if an Elvis minifigure is placed on the reader, you’ll hear Elvis’s music.

LEGO figures dressed as member of the band KISS
Mini KISS rocking out on the NFC reader

The Raspberry Pi is hooked up to the LEGO Dimensions toy pad, with Musicfig (Dennis’s name for his creation) playing tracks via Spotify over Bluetooth. The small screen behind the minifigures is displaying the Musicfig web application which, like the Spotify app, displays the album art for the track that’s currently playing. 

No Spotify or LEGO? No problem!

Daft Punk LEGO minifgures stood on an NFC reader next to a Raspberry Pi and a phone showing Daft Punk playing on Spotify
Daft Punk LOVES Raspberry Pi

Spotify playback is optional, as you can use your own MP3 music file collection instead. You also don’t have to use LEGO Minifigures: most NFC-enabled devices or tags can be used, including Disney Infinity, Nintendo Amiibo, and Skylander toy characters.

Mini figurines in the shape of various kids film charactera
Why not have Elsa sing… what’s that song again? Let it… what was it?

Dennis thought Musicfig could be a great marketable LEGO product for kids and grown-ups alike, and and he submitted it to the LEGO Ideas website. Unfortunately, he had tinkered a little too much (we approve) and it wasn’t accepted, due to rules that don’t allow non-LEGO parts or customisations.

Want to build one?

The LEGO Dimensions toy pad was discontinued in 2017, but Dennis has seen some sets on sale at a few department stores, and even more cheaply on second-hand market sites like Bricklink. We’ve spotted them on eBay and Amazon too. Dennis also advises that the toy pad often sells for less than a dedicated NFC reader.

A Tron mini figure on the reader with the Tron movie soundtrack seen playing on the screen behind it
What’s the best movie soundtrack and why is it Tron?

Watch Dennis’s seven-year-old son Benny show you how it all works, from Elvis through to Prodigy via Daft Punk and Queen.

You can tell which songs Benny likes best because the volume goes to 11

There are some really simple step-by-step instructions for a quick install here, as well as a larger gallery of Musicfig rigs. And Dennis hosts a more detailed walkthrough of the project, plus code examples, here.

You can find all things Dennis-related, including previous Raspberry Pi projects, here.

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