Reviewed: October 24, 2006
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud
Publisher
Viva Media
Developer
Morton Subotnick
Released: September 13, 2006
Genre: Music
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone
8
6
10
10
8.5
System Requirements
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
Morton Subotnick’s, Playing Music is the forth Music titled game he has produced as a musical learning tool geared towards children. Using easy to learn and understand music concepts such as accelerando and forte this game focuses on the expressive qualities of music.
While not really a game as such this interactive musical tool concentrates on expression and the parts of music that are integral to expressing the emotion and feeling in music. Using such great composers such as Chopin, Mozart and Beethoven you can learn how they use the tempo and rhythm to change the feeling and meaning of music.
Playing Music uses several sections to help anyone learn about expressing feelings and emotions and how changing music in certain ways changes how it sounds. Changing the tempo and rhythm of music really changes the way it sounds and the different feelings you can evoke in the listener.
This interactive tool shows how to do this using several popular and recognize composers and music writers and their music. Using one piece of music such as Bach or Beethoven it uses your keyboard to show how changing the speed of music changes how that piece sounds.
In Playing music you do not learn how to create music, that is another title in this series. You learn how the sheet music symbols affect the music that is played and how the different speed, or tempo can change how it sounds. You learn what many of the symbols on sheet music mean as far as changing the music like speed or whether a section of the music is supposed to get louder or softer, faster or slower.
One section called games you can learn what tempo and rhythm are and the different symbols for all the different things you do to music to change it. Using one simple matching game to teach the different symbols or concepts they are trying to get across makes this an easy to use tool to learn the very basic concepts of expression in music.
There is also a section of Playing Music that has you reading sheet music, don’t panic it’s not that hard, to show how the symbols work. You can hear the pieces of music from the famous composers using your own expressive changes you made in the Expression Room in another section of the game called the Auditorium. Or you can see videos of a famous pianist, Frederic Chiu perform many of the pieces in the game.
There is not much to tell about this section, as this is not really a game. Playing Music uses simple cartoon characters in some of the sections to entertain as you learn. They also use flash video to play the nine pieces from pianist Frederic Chiu that was very clear and played well.
Using a music interactive tool would be meaningless without having clear sound for the music. All the sections played clearly without any problems and the videos of the pianist sounded very good. Just like a stereo system, the better the sound card on your computer the better this game will sound but there is really no settings or problems here. The music sounds excellent, as you would expect.
Let’s face it; understanding sheet music is hard. The interactive tool Playing Music helps you to understand what many of those symbols and figures on sheet music are. You will hear what they do to the same piece of music when you change them. Using this basic knowledge and the other music titles you can teach anyone what music is and how to read sheet music and understand music that much more.
Although not really a game I have rated this as one and given this a top value because of how easily I could understand the concepts they were teaching. Using the games section you can learn all the symbols and what they do to music and really very quickly know those symbols. Using the sections in the Auditorium like the Expression Room where you change the music using these symbols and what they do you can see how the same piece of music sounds totally different just by making these small changes.
In music notes are the different keys on the piano or sounds of an instrument. It’s all those other symbols that can change how the music sounds and the different meanings they can have to a piece and the expression the composer is trying to convey.
Playing Music is the title in this series that explores the tempo and rhythm of music and all those funny symbols on sheet music. You can learn how they change the expression of music and how much this affects what the piece sounds like. If you want to learn music or teach children all about music easily and quickly in a way they will enjoy and understand try Playing Music and the other titles in this series; Hearing Music, Making Music and Making More Music.