Virtual Piano!

This is such a cool idea. I can use it to illustrate basic uses of transformations in music. Yesss.

Neat links: Meow Meow song and 3 Blind Mice are both good examples of some of these common transformations. I think I'm going to give the kids a sheet of partially filled out music, have them perform some quickie reflections and translations to fill out the rest of the missing bars, and we'll use the virtual keyboard to play the music, in order to reinforce the connection of how those musical notes / patterns are affected by the transformation.

Excited! :) What a cool, multi-sensory application of transformations!

(I was telling Geoff about this, and he wasn't too impressed. Them musical people take these things for granted, I guess. He told me it's called "transposing," and that pianists do it all the time -- in real time! -- to adjust the musical keys to fit the singers' vocal ranges. But still, I think it's pretty darn cool that it's nothing more than a geometric transformation.)

Another neat link between music and math: My friend Jon has a deejay software that allows him to filter out certain parts of a song. When we get to sinusoidal functions in Precalc, I'm going to try to set up something to give the kids a sneak peek of how Fourier Transforms are used by musicians to blend / adjust music! Maybe we'll even have Jon guest-deejay for us. :)