Tutorial 3 - Timbre

Introduction

Timbre is the character of a notes sound, excluding their pitch.

This tutorial will guide you through exploring "timbre" in Codetta.

Dynamics

Dynamics refer to how loud or quiet notes are played. Imagine a volume control on your tv.

TASK: Recreate the screen shot below into Codetta.



The dynamics (pink) block will set the volume of all the bars to the right of it, unless changed by another dynamic block.

You can change the loudness of the dynamics by clicking on the drop down menu within the "dynamics block", and choosing one of the options.



Music has alot of terms, and it can get very hard remembering the names of all of the different things, especially when they match a multiude of different symbols.

To help with this you can find the "info bar" at the bottom of Codetta (shown below).



This displays alittle bit of information everytime you do something within Codetta - so looking at it can help you figure out what a "thing" does and it's correct name.

TASK: By looking at the info bar, try to figure out the correct names for the "p" and "f" symbols and what they do.

Instruments

Another large aspect of timbre is choosing instruments. Lots of different instruments have many different charactersistics.

Similarities and differences can be found between all of Codettas instruments.



These can be found by going to the purple instruments tab in the toolbar.

All instruments are "start blocks" and work just like the "speaker block" we have been using so far.

I.e. instead of starting with the speaker block, pick an instrument to begin a stream of music.

I See The Moon

The best way to learn about the sounds of the different instruments is to start experimenting with them.

TASK: Copy out the nursery rhyme "I See The Moon" below.

The global tempo is 120 bpm!

Can you describe how each part is structured within the entire song, as you compose?

Improvisation

Now that you have copied "I See The Moon" pick an instrument of your choice.

Adding up to 8 different "2/4" blocks, compose your own accompaniying melody to the peice, however, only use the notes G A B D and E

To remind yourself of the pitch of each note, look at the "info bar" the letter after "Treble = " (circled in the picture below.)