Layla Listens, Or Scratching the Surface of Music

Layla fans, you've got me on my knees.
I'm begging, please.
Layla fans, won't you ease

Okay, I've learned my lesson: You can say something bad about a person's dog, but don't say anything negative about their favorite music. Which is the mistake I made last week in my "World's Smallest Radio Built; Still Plays Bad Music" note. Thanks to everyone who wrote in, I've changed my ways and have decided that "Layla" is okay (but I'm not backing down from "Good Vibrations").

Of course, I'm not surprised about the interest in music on the part of computer programmers. Long-time Dr. Dobb's columnist Al Stevens for instance was--and still is--a professional musician. And one of the first conversations I ever had with former Dr. Dobb's columnist Allen Holub was supposed to be about programming, but ended up about music. The cross-over between music and software development is an accepted fact.

Which means it is no surprise that there are programming languages developed for music applications. Take Scratch, for instance. Designed by a group at MIT, Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create music, interactive stories, animations, games, and art--and share your creations on the web. Granted, it primarily focuses on kids (like Alice which I mentioned the other day), but it is also designed to teach mathematical and computational ideas, while gaining a deeper understanding of the design process.

There's a lot of active research going on with Scratch, including a group implementing Scratch features into another new programming languge for Second Life, with the goal being to make it easier to create interactive virtual stuff. Then there is ScratchR, which is the engine behind the Scratch online community. Unlike other user-generated content communities, ScratchR makes it easy to reuse other people's creations to foster collaborative learning. ScratchR allows members to rate, comment, tag, and create galleries.

Sounds like fun, but I for one am going to avoid rating or commenting on music from now on.

-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com

Posted by Jon Erickson at 01:21 PM  Permalink