Manhattan: Serious games for serious music

Nash, Chris

Abstract

This paper details a digital platform designed for digital creativity, learning, and engagement with new concepts and aesthetics in both music and coding. An open online ecosystem is outlined, connecting users for the purposes of collating, sharing, supporting, collaborating, and competing with works combining music and code – collectively designed to tackle both intrinsic and extrinsic motivational issues in both the learning of music and programming.
Developing on observed practices and aesthetics in digital music subcultures, composing and coding through a unified digital notation is fashioned as a ‘serious game’; composers compete against themselves or others, in works that combine creativity and virtuosity in music and code. Mechanisms for scoring pieces with respect to both musical aesthetic (e.g. user reviews) and technique (e.g. code complexity) are considered, proposing a metric that rewards conciseness, in order to encourage abstraction and pattern recognition in both music and code.
The platform develops on Manhattan (Nash, 2014), an end-user programming environment for music composition, based on a text-based pattern sequencer, using a grid/cell formula metaphor to integrate programming functionality. A rapid edit-audition cycle improves the liveness of notation interaction, facilitating learning and experimentation. Unlike other music programming tools, it prioritises the visibility and editing of musical data, rather than code; as in spreadsheets, users are able to engage with code expressions as much (or as little) as they wish, offering a lower entry threshold and shallower learning curve for programming – plus a continuum of musical applications from the fixed, structured notation of music (e.g. MIDI sequencing) to more dynamic and experimental elements, such as minimal (process-based) and algorithmic composition techniques. The paper provides musical examples and discusses existing use of the technologies in teaching, with reference to lessons and workshops based on the software, as well as current and future directions for the research.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Conference on Music, Education, and Technology (MET) 2016
• Start Date: Mar 14, 2016
• End Date: Mar 15, 2016
• Acceptance Date: Jan 18, 2016
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: May 4, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: May 4, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: music education, serious games, end-user programming, motivation, notation, composition
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/921860
• Publisher URL: http://sempre.org.uk
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : Music, Education and Technology (MET) 2016
• Contract Date: May 4, 2016