Making Music
Ages: Everyone

This is the activity that obviously follows Hearing Music. The author noticed one day that his 5 year old daughter was painting, and after standing back and looking at it said that she had to add more yellow on top and bottom. This game tries to give the same opportunity in playing with music -- make it visual and easy to change.

And so we start with the building blocks. Simple tunes are analyzed in terms of ABC, beginning, middle and end and so Twinkle Twinkle Little Star can be seen as ACBBAC. The other amusing experiment is called Mix and Match which assigns melody, instrument and tempo to top middle and bottom part of a figure. Changing them is entertaining both sound-wise and visually. Making Music is the central section to the program. It looks like an early paint program with multiple icons. It contains everything you might want to play with -- and them some.

Warning -- you must start with the Overview. This is the only information for a fairly complex program. There is only brief printed information that comes with the disk. This product would have benefited from big full color manual. Either way I am glad that it exists.

Making More Music is included in the game package. This game provides the player with the opportunity to compose music similar to the chamber music she is hearing and then to modify it with themes and variations within the same style. As with Making Music read the Overview!

Reviewed by: Editor - 10/04