Lesson Plan: Making Music with Pi
To help celebrate Pi Day (March 14th - 3/14), here is a very easy lesson plan to get your students composing in Noteflight using the first 10 digits of Pi. This lesson is one of thousands from the MusicFirst Classroom Content Library. If you are a MusicFirst Classroom subscriber, just add shared/view/lesson/8276# to the end of your site URL to access the full lesson plan.
Objectives
Students will create an 8-measure composition using the first 10 digits of pi
Students will create melodies based on scale
Students may create lyrics to song
Students will use pi to create melody (align digits with scale)
Materials
Noteflight Task (see bleow)
Have students review the two charts in the Student View of this lesson plan and discuss
Discuss with students that there are several ways to write song:
numbers used as lyrics
polysyllabic words based on digits
lyrics about pi
convert numbers to musical notes or chords
Students may get into groups of 2-4 students for this project
Students will discuss & plan how they will utilize pi to write their song
Review with students how to use Noteflight.
Students begin composing their pi songs
Finish writing & recording songs
Teacher will play back compositions for students to critique
Extensions
Students could create songs about pi without utilizing the numerical value of pi in their song. This will encourage the students to use their own creativity in terms of composing without limitations.
To learn more about the incredible number known as Pi, visit this link: www.piday.org/million
In this lesson, you will create a musical composition using Noteflight by converting the decimals of pi to pitches. Below is a major scale beginning on the B below Middle C. Each note has a number beneath it - converting the pitch to a number.
If you were to convert the first 10 digits of pi to musical pitches using this chart, the pitches would be:
You can either use just these 10 pitches to create your melody or you can continue with the next 10 digits. Other ideas for converting these numbers into music include:
• Use only the first five pitches (or any other number) as an ostinato pattern
• Make chords based on each pitch: E minor, C Major, F Major, etc.
• Play each pitch the same amount of times as the numeric value (3 E’s, 1 C, 4 F’s, etc.)
• Be creative! Make up your own ideas.
Here is an embedded Noteflight score so that you can compose your Pi-based composition right here.
If you’d like to share this blank score, here is a link: https://mflms-demo.learning.noteflight.com/scores/view/066d39be9853e503bc6f72dc9146659038805106