On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 9:57 PM, Caryl Bigenho <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Scott, > > I would love to know more about the Simple Piano Activity. Unfortunately, I > don't know how to get to it. Gonzalo's notes say it is to use with Tam Tam. > It is hard to see how that would work. Is it a divided screen? You really > should have access to the controls on the Tam Tam main screen while playing. > Can you send me a screenshot? > > Did you see my email about the Tam Tam FLOSS manual I have been working on? > It has links so you can go take a look at it. I'll forward a copy to all of > you in a separate email. It shows some of the things that can be done with > Tam Tam. I tried most of them with students at the Montana school where > there is a small CP project and with a group of adults in a workshop at the > SF Summit. > > The main difficulty with Tam Tam is actually the use of the XO keyboard with > the letters on it that don't match up with the note names. People with no > musical experience have little difficulty. Musicians, even with just a few > piano lessons, get very confused. > > This is the reason I haven't moved the FLOSS manual to the "publish" status > yet. My granddaughter (a 13-year-old violinist) suggested I add an Appendix > with all of the musical examples written out in standard notation for people > who already read music. I will have to wait until after SCaLE 10X to find > time to do it. >
I find this interesting. I learned to play sitar, tabla and bansuri (Indian bamboo flute) in the Hindustani tradition, but never learned to read music. Hindustani music relies on frameworks (raga), and a good bit of improvisation within frameworks, so reading and playing doesn't work much. In fact, a raga rendered by one artist may be different from another artist's rendition (btw, here's a good intro to the tradition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWQ3kfBLn54 where the Rajan Mishra demonstrates (at 3:02) the difference between two ragas with similar notes). So, I still can't read a printed notation (I don't even know what its called, but it sure looks like a bunch of birds on telephone wires!), but can play by ear or read Sa Re Ga Ma... (=Do Re Me Fa...). When I have to play on the XO, I don't look at the letters. I look (and remember) to location of the keys and the notes they make. Also keep in mind that the keyboard can change from one script to the next, so a correlation of notes with letters becomes moot. cheers, Sameer > There is also a free CC copyright class right after SCaLE on Moodle for > Wikieducators that I thought would be useful to take before working on the > musical examples. > > Keep me posted on what you decide to do with Tam Tam and other musical > Activities. I am very interested! > > Thanks, > Caryl > >> Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 22:55:34 -0500 >> Subject: Re: Tam Tam on the XO-3 >> From: [email protected] >> To: [email protected] >> CC: [email protected]; [email protected] > >> >> On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 11:35 PM, Caryl Bigenho <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > Hi Folks, >> > >> > I don't know exactly who to send this to, so maybe someone who reads it >> > will >> > know and pass it along. While working on materials for playing songs on >> > the >> > XO-1 using Tam Tam Mini and Tam Tam Jam for a Contributors Program >> > project I >> > am helping, it occurred to me that it should be fairly easy to provide >> > a >> > standard black and white piano-type keyboard screen image to use on the >> > new >> > XO-3. This would eliminate the frustrating process of translating >> > musical >> > notes from their normal letter names (eg cdefgabc) to the names of the >> > corresponding keys on the xo keyboard (eg zxcvbnm). >> > >> > So my question is... will the Tam Tam suite of Activities be included in >> > the >> > Sugar build for the XO-3? Have you programmed a musical keyboard screen >> > image yet? If not, I strongly suggest one be included in your plans. >> >> I'm hacking on http://git.sugarlabs.org/simplepiano at the moment, but >> I agree that Tam Tam is a better long term solution. >> --scott >> >> -- >> ( http://cscott.net ) > > _______________________________________________ > Testing mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/testing > _______________________________________________ Testing mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/testing
