Day 1: Caroline

  Today was only the first day of the Music and Video Games M-Term, and we have already done so many things! We started the day with an icebreaker regarding which games and game music we liked, and then, as a class, completed the New York Times Wordle and Connections of the day. Then, Mr. Lowery introduced us to ‘Bandle,’ which is like Wordle, only you guess a song by its beat, and until you guess it correctly, you gain auditory clues, such as the instruments playing in the background. 

After the games, Mr. Lowery played us 12 tracks from Super Mario Odyssey, and we had to guess which song was assigned to each kingdom in the game. Next, we each grabbed a Boom Whacker and practiced playing a Wii song with them. Each member of the class had one Boom Whacker, which played a single musical note, and we hit it against our hands or legs at certain times, according to the music. After we practiced for a short period of time, we were actually pretty good at playing the song, which surprised me. 

The next part of class was allotted to learning about sound waves, how we hear sounds from our ears to our brain, and the difference between analog and digital audio. We took notes and watched videos. After lunch, we listened to many historical game sounds and music from games such as Pong and Space Invaders. The difference between modern game music and game music from the 1980s is astounding! 

Finally, we paired up, and each made a timeline of a specific part of video game history. My timeline was about the rise of 3D gaming. At the end of the day, we all presented our timelines and together created a comprehensive timeline of video game history.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 4: Michelle and Stirling

Image
  We started our day with our game year in system, guessing game where Mr. Lowery play the song and we guess the game, year, and system the song belonged to. Today was so difficult. Most people got zero points. We then did the Wordle, which was “rehab”. Then we did connections, which was quick and easy today. Next, we did strands. The theme today was “bring a plate”. Next, we did a Bandle, which was easy, it was “Dynamite”. Next, we went into our song guessing game, which is where we guess which song fits into which location inside of a game. The game today was “Yoshi‘s Island”. This one was really fun. I got 9/12 points. Next, we all got boom whackers and played the song “New Horizons” from the game “Animal Crossing” which is always really fun. After our break Mr. Lowery started to teach us about a new music topic: motif. Which is a little bit of music that comes back many times. We even watched an 8-Bit Music Theory video to further understand the concept of a motifs. Our next ta...
Read more

Day 2: Sierra

Image
  Today, we started off by doing our daily game where we had to listen to a song and guess what videogame it came from, what year it came out, and what system it was released on. After that we played a guessing game. Today it was Stardew Valley themed. We had to match songs that we heard to a specific place in the videogame that it was programmed too. At around 10:00 am we switched over to music theory and vocabulary. First we learned basic music theory (eighth notes = ap-ple, sixteenth notes = wa-ter-me-lon), then switched to learning vocab such as “Instrumentation” and “Dynamics”  so we could better describe and analyze songs. We then ate lunch and when we came back, we had to do our own analysis of the main theme song from a game of our choice. I chose the game Stray. Then, we talked about our analysis and it was really interesting to dive deeper into the songs. For the last hour of class we learned how to create music using the platform soundtrap in preparation for tomorro...
Read more

Day 9: Cora and Julian

Image
 Cora:  Today, we started off by guessing the song of the day and the word of the day. Then, we worked on the songs that we’ve been working on all week. We made two pivotal moment songs to add  to our video game we made.    Julian: The second half of 3/26 was a well-earned afternoon of fun. After working tirelessly on creating concepts for original games and making music for them, we were rewarded with a trip to Cidercade, an arcade in East Downtown. Once we were in, it was a gamer’s dream! They had all kinds of arcade games, from 80s games to more contemporary titles. We all had a blast, finally experiencing the music in games as players and not students. After 2 hours of playing as many games as we could, we returned to Post Oak to end the day with some Just Dance and afternoon chores. A great day and a fitting one as we near the end of M term.
Read more