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Incredibox
Pros: Design is outstanding, and writing music is beyond fun with these guys at your fingertips.
Cons: Play can become repetitive, and kids may tire of it eventually.
Bottom Line: Musically minded kids will go wild here, creating compelling pieces of music in minutes, and beginners will feel like pros right away.
Incredibox would make a great warm-up activity for a choir, band, or any sort of music appreciation class. Heck, it's so fun, any classroom could benefit from a few musical rounds. Kids can easily sing along or improvise to the simple tunes (very easy to harmonize with) that come from Incredibox combinations.
Incredibox appears to be a totally fun place to play around, but it's teaching music and composition skills at the same time. Score! You may go crazy hearing your kids' somewhat repetitive songs, but they will love this beatboxing crew.
Incredibox is a music creation website that allows users to put together songs from a collection of pre-created musical elements. A handful of sleepy-eyed hipsters become your very own beatboxing crew with Incredibox's simple interface. Beginning with a single character on-screen, users assign him a particular musical element, which he will repeat. Drag and drop from a bar of options -- Effects, Beats, Melodies, Chorus, and Voices. Another dude appears next to the first, and you choose a sound for him, and so on, until the screen is full and you've created a rich song. No sound is "wrong"; they all fit into the ever-developing song.
Kids can learn to put together a great-sounding song by experimenting with 20 different beats, melodies, and other musical elements. They'll make decisions about what sounds best, and create mood and atmosphere by adding or subtracting certain elements from a composition. Discovering where a single sound fits into the whole of a song, kids will gain an understanding of the combinations it takes to make all kinds of music.
Layering these song elements is crazy fun, and kids will love playing around with this site (and although the never-ending jam might get a little repetitive to parental ears, it's better than Barney). The site's a bit difficult to navigate at first, but after a little poking around, everything makes sense. The black-and-white characters are modern and funny to watch as they make their musical contributions. Creativity and experimentation are at the forefront. In terms of musical composition, the tools are somewhat limited. Kids won't be able to take the learning experience very far; however, they will get to see how simple sounds come together to create a dynamic piece of music.
Learning Rating
Explore Elements of Composition with this Beatbox Mixing Tool
Incredibox offers a fun way to explore elements of composition and it provides enough material for one or two music lessons. I see two potential pitfalls for use in the classroom: 1) students may get bored with extended use, and 2) students may waste time if left to explore without guidance. Therefore, in order for this website to promote creative composition that involves student collaboration and critical thinking, teachers will have to consider the concepts presented by this tool and then design lessons and projects strategically. Although Incredibox is a website that allows students to "create" (highest level on SAMR ladder) students can create here without much intentionality. Alongside pedagogical aims and plans laid out by the teacher, however, this website can help students gain a deeper understanding of the elements of music and how they interact with one another in a composition.