About Noise and Buttons:

Noise and Buttons is a pioneering music education project that aims to make music education more accessible for neurodivergent students by integrating sensory-friendly hardware and software interfaces. While the program is inclusive and open to all, its primary focus is on catering to the needs of the neurodivergent community. At the heart of Noise and Buttons is a sandbox-styled application featuring a user-friendly music engine controlled by four buttons. These buttons enable users to manipulate different musical elements, being tempo, rhythm, timbre, and harmony. Each button is color coded with red, yellow, green and blue; corresponding to tempo, rhythm, timbre, and harmony respectively. Through simple button presses, users can explore an extensive array of musical sounds, facilitating hours of exploration. Complimenting the app is the Noise and Buttons Musical Learning Program, a comprehensive curriculum developed to guide students in learning the various aspects of music. The program incorporates interactive exercises within the app and musical examples to reinforce concepts. It comprises slideshows designed for classroom instruction and an eight-part video series, with two videos dedicated to each aspect of music. Collectively, these components build one unifying goal: to make entry-level music education more accessible for everyone, eliminating the fear of where to start, and hopefully leading to students pursuing to continue studying the musical arts.


How to Play:

To play with the Noise and Buttons web app, click the "Play" button on the top menu bar, or click the link below:

Play

Depending on what controls you choose to use, the app will function differently. Click on the name of your control device below to expand detailed instructions on how to control the app with that desired control scheme.


Buttons:

Controlling the Noise and Buttons app with the button controller is easy. There are four color-coded buttons that each control one of the four aspects of music. What you will notice is that simple button clicks will result in random musical changes, while holding down the buttons will unlock more specific and controlled changes to the music. Below are detailed descriptions on how to control the app with just these four buttons:

Red Button

The red button controls the speed of the music, which can be defined as tempo.

Quick Press

A quick press will result in random tempo between 50-140bpm (beats-per-minute).

Press-and-Hold

A press-and-hold will increase the tempo slowly until it reaches the max of 140bpm, where it will reverse and decrease until hitting the minimum of 50bpm, where it will increase again. This will continue forever as long as the button is pressed down. It will stop at the current tempo number once the button is released.

Yellow Button

The yellow button controls how each beat is divided among the three voices of the app. This can be defined as rhythm.

Quick Press

A quick press will result in random rhythmic divisions for each voice. This can create some interesting rhythmic patterns

Press-and-Hold

A press-and-hold will affect the articulation of each note that is produced. The attack and the decay of each note will increase and decrease, moving from a very pointed sound to a more smooth sound and vise-versa.

Green Button

The green button controls the timbre of the entire sound. Timbre is best defined as the character or quality of a musical sound.

Quick Press

A quick press will result in random changes to some fun audio effects like echo and vibrato (which can make the sound feel silly and unstable)

Press-and-Hold

A press-and-hold will adjust the overall intensity of the sound by making it brighter and darker. The movement of this change works similarly to the red button's tempo change

Blue Button

The blue button controls what notes out of specific scales of notes will randomly play when the app is on. Harmony is all about combinations of similar notes played together to produce pleasing (or unpleasing) sounds

Quick Press

A quick press will result in a random scale to be selected from a specific category of scales which you can select with the drop-down list above the blue button interface.

Press-and-Hold

A press-and-hold will turn on and off voices. There is a pattern that the app will follow when turning on and off voices. It will cycle through different combinations of voices, until it ultimately reaches all three voices being on.



Game Controllers:

Controlling the Noise and Buttons app with a game controller allows detailed control of the four aspects of music while still being easy and fun to use. Below is a list of every controller button and joystick organized by the musical aspect they control. Each control includes a brief description of what it does when interaced with:

Tempo

Left Joy-Stick

By moving the left joy-stick up or down, the tempo will move up or down. Depending on how far you push the stick in either direction, the speed of change will adjust accordingly.

Left Joy-Stick Button

Pressing the left joy-stick button will result in random tempo between 50-140bpm (beats-per-minute).

Rhythm

Direction-Pad

The direction-pad allows for specific control of the rhythm in each voice. The left and right buttons on the pad will let you select which voice you want to adjust the rhythm of, and the up and down buttons on the pad will increase or decrease the note value of the selected voice.

Left-Bumper

The left-bumper will adjust the attack of each note by bouncing between the minimum and maximum attack value while held down.

Left-Trigger

The left-trigger will adjust the decay of each noteby bouncing between the minimum and maximum attack value while held down.

Timbre

A, B, X, and Y Buttons

These four buttons provide percise control to the timbre's two main effects: echo and wobble. X controls the feedback of the echo (how many echos are heard after every note). Y controls the volume of the echo. A controls the speed of the wobble. B controls how intense the wobble effect is on the sound.

Right-Bumper

The right-bumper will adjust how bright the sound is.

Right-Trigger

The right-trigger will adjust how resonant the sound is.

Harmony

Plus and Minus Buttons

The plus and minus buttons (labeled as "+" & "-") will cycle through different combinations of voices.

Right Joy-Stick

Around the right joy-stick is a wheel of 12 scales. When you move the stick to one of these scale labels on the wheel, the corresponding scale will be set as the scale of the synth.

Right Joy-Stick Button

Pressing the right joy-stick button will result in a random scale to be selected.

Pressing the home button will switch the app on or off.



To learn more about the details and inner-working of the app, click here to read the thesis paper for Noise and Buttons.