Programming Music with Sonic Pi Promotes Positive Attitudes for Beginners
In this episode I unpack Petrie’s (2021) publication titled “Programming music with Sonic Pi promotes positive attitudes for beginners,” which investigates student attitudes around enjoyment, importance, and anxiety when coding music through Sonic Pi.
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Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each episode of this podcast is either
an interview with a guest or multiple
guests or a solo episode where i unpack
some scholarship in relation to computer
science education in this week's episode
i'm unpacking a paper titled programming
music with sonic pi promotes positive
attitudes for beginners written by
christopher petrie apologies if i
mispronounced your name here's the
abstract for this paper quote
programming is often misaligned with
beginner students interests and viewed
as difficult however most students and
teachers are not aware that it is
possible to utilize domain-specific
programming languages that combine
programming with other domains like
music making sonic pi is one free
domain-specific programming platform
that enables beginners to code music
which has been designed for and used in
schools since his first release in 2012.
however there is a lack of academic
research on the sonic pi platform about
the extent it may affect beginner
student attitudes towards programming in
a school context the aim of the study
was to investigate the extent sonic pi
may help to promote positive attitudes
towards programming a mixed methods case
study was developed and trialled in
school time with a middle school class
which measured student attitudes with
the three subscales of enjoyment
importance and anxiety overall the
results confirmed an alternative
hypothesis that all students subscales
for programming attitude increase
significantly while these findings are
not generalizable due to its limited
scope they are very positive to inform
the design and use of platforms like
sonic pi in comparison to similar music
coding platforms like ear sketch and
tune pad and quote try to summarize this
paper into a single sentence i'd say
that this paper investigates student
attitudes around enjoyment importance
and anxiety when coding music through
sonic pie you want to check out this
particular paper i do recommend doing so
you can find a link to it in the show
notes as well as a link to the author's
google scholar profile you can find that
by clicking the link in the app that
you're listening to this on or by going
to jarrodleary.com and just clicking on
podcast and while you're there you'll
notice that this podcast is powered by
boot up professional development which
is the nonprofit that i work for if you
haven't checked out boot.pd.org make
sure you check out the curriculum and
the professional development we provide
so in the introduction the author
mentions that there's a lot of different
programming platforms and even languages
that have come out in recent years to
try and make it more appealing and
easier for beginners and they cite some
research that basically says that hey if
you have a variety of ways to engage
with programming or computer science
then this can help improve attitudes
towards programming which i completely
agree with i used to facilitate multiple
programming languages and platforms all
in the same class so if there's like 30
kids in there they'd be working on 30
different projects but they could be
working on sonic pi which is the
platform in this particular study they
could be doing javascript with khan
academy they could be doing scratch
which is block-based programming
language or they could even be doing
swift in xcode or in swift playgrounds
to be able to create apps for their ipad
or something so students had several
different languages whether it was swift
javascript scratch or ruby and sonic pi
and several different platforms that all
kind of emphasize different things
whether it's like games and stories or
art and animation or app development or
music so although the majority of
students tended to about 80 for each
class would focus on scratch that
remaining 20
who might not have enjoyed scratch as
much as i love it they preferred to do
something else and so i definitely agree
that having a variety of approaches
really helps with like that 20 of
students who might not be interested in
what the majority are interested in and
like the author mentions there's not a
lot of studies on music making with code
and if there are most of them tend to
focus on well what are the benefits for
computer science and interestingly i'm
actually supervising a doc student who
is studying high school attitudes on
making music with sonic pi to see if it
improves their attitudes towards music
making not just computer science but
this particular study is going to focus
on the question quote can composing
music with a sonic pi platform help to
promote positive attitudes towards
programming end quote that's from page
two so we'll answer that question for
this particular group today but stay
tuned in the future for more research on
whether or not it actually promotes
positive attitudes towards music making
right so the next section is the
background so they talk about the
importance of attitude as well as like
domain-specific programming platforms
which mark guzdail talked about a little
bit in the interview that i did with him
so make sure you check out that
interview if you're interested in i'll
include a link to that in the show notes
but here's a quote from page two quote
domain specific programming platforms
have shown to be potentially motivating
for beginners and foster positive
attitudes because they enable an easier
way to combine a domain they are already
interested in like music with
programming end quote i totally agree i
had some students who are like yo the
only thing i want to do in life is
produce music if there's a way that i
can somehow make music in this class
then i will be happy because they were
required to be there we found a way to
incorporate that interest whether it's
making music in sonic by or in scratch
and then those students were happy if
they were instead forced to make apps
that were not related music they would
have been like why do i need to know
this so having some kind of domain
specific programming platform can be
really helpful for students like that
and the following one the author kind of
talks about well one what is sonic pine
how is it different from other platforms
like ear sketch and tune pad and then
also kind of unpacking what is live
coding so sonic pi uses ruby which is
very syntax light so it's super easy
programming language you don't have to
worry about semicolons you don't have to
type a lot to get things done it's a
very quick language to program which is
fantastic for people who are brand new
to programming like i used to do sonic
pie with fourth grade and above but you
could certainly even do it with third
grade and above just go a little bit
slower but because sonic pi is so easy
to use and type out people actually use
it to do something called live coding so
live coding in programming is typically
described as like well when you go up
for a lecture you will like instead of
showing a completed example you actually
type the example live but this is
actually very different from that so
yeah you're going up in you're
displaying your code and you're typing
it out live but you're doing it to make
live music you're not just composing
where you write out all the code and
then you press play and say what does it
sound like instead you're typing the
code and then maybe the first line will
just kind of like loop a bass drum beat
and you'll press run and then that bass
drum beat is going to go on forever
because we're making some edm because
why not then while you're still
listening to the bass drum you might add
in some high hat and some snare drum and
you press run and it just automatically
adds it into the music that you're
making then you'll add in like a bass
line some melodies harmonies etc and
you'll live code music i'll include some
videos in the show notes that kind of
demonstrate some different ways that
people make music live with sonic pi
it's fascinating you might watch like an
hour-long segment and you'll be able to
see every line of code that is being
used to create that so you can actually
recreate it on your own without having
to like reverse engineer it just by
listening to it so this is a really neat
affordance that sonic pi has that other
platforms do not have but i will say as
the author mentions that composing music
is a whole lot easier to do than
performing the music live so all the
elementary students that i worked with
and even the middle school kids they
would compose their music in sonic pie
they'd come back each day and kind of
refine it or create something new rather
than like perform it for their peers
that is a more complicated thing to do
but it's a really neat thing that you
can do with sonic pi alright so the next
section talks about attitude studies on
music and programming so a lot of these
are kind of like looking at ear sketch
and some other platforms but to be
honest there's really not a ton of
research out there it's still very much
under explored in my opinion which is
neat we're forging new ground so stay
tuned a decade from now hopefully we'll
have a bunch of other people who are
interested in music in cs who will
explore this more like i did in my
dissertation which looked at a variety
of different practices to create chip
music so if you want to check that out
music with a retro and old video game
and computer hardware there's a lot of
coding and even hardware practices that
the chip musicians engaged in i'll
include a link to the dissertation in
the show notes where it is available 100
for free all right so next section is
methods so this talks about how this was
a six-part unit of work had 22
programmers that were between ages of 11
and 12 and it used a constructionist
approach or kind of like guide students
thinking through questions instead of
providing answers but then had some like
resources and whatnot to help support
student engagement like sonic pi has a
bunch of tutorials in it that show you
how to do things has like a dictionary
that shows you like what does this
particular control structure do well
here are some examples etcetera so it's
very friendly to new users and it's a
free platform by the way if you haven't
tried out sonic pi yet like sonic pi.net
i highly recommend it i'll include a
link to that in the show notes just be
warned you might get lost in it for
hours because you'll just be having fun
making music or listening to like the
edm that people make or even like the
there's like a bach piece that is
completely written out in sonic pi or
you can even create like spooky sound
effects or like what could i do to make
an ocean sound etc there's examples
built into it i'll show you how to do
all that alright so the next section or
subsection rather of this paper talks
about the pre and post unit of work
questionnaires so it has like different
parts where like one section focused on
quantitative changes and attitudes
towards music composition and
programming next one is more qualitative
responses towards music and programming
and then the last section is like
demographics so it's like what are their
prior experiences with music and
programming etc now the author does note
on page five that they actually not only
measured the programming attitudes but
also some music composition attitudes to
see if there are any similarities or
differences between that and programming
but again the main question guiding this
is whether improved attitudes towards
coding next subsection talks about pre
and post interviews if you want to read
more about that make sure you check that
out and then kind of unpacks the
research context and sample so 10 of the
students were female 12 were male most
were from new zealand european descent
two were indian two were chinese one was
german one was samoan and according to
the school none of the students had any
special needs or any specific
significant language difficulties for
their age so table two on page five is
interesting so talks about how none of
the students had prior experience with
programming and music making in one
activity however four of the males and
two of the females had prior programming
experience so six out of the 22. one of
the males and three of the females so 4
out of 22 had special music trainings
like taking lessons but again did not
have any programming experience two of
the males and two of the females so four
out of 22 had prior experience in both
programming and in music but they were
separate five of the males and three of
the females so eight out of 22 were
completely new to both programming and
music making i had a good range of
different experiences among the
different participants all right so then
the last section of the methods talks
about data analysis so if you want to
get nerdy learn more about the
quantitative and qualitative analysis
approaches check out page six but let's
talk about the results here's a quote
from page six quote all programming
attitude subscales indicated higher t
values than music suggesting the unit of
work had a more significant difference
in all attitude subscales for
programming in comparison to all
attitude subscales from music end quote
that is interesting so in other words it
improves students attitudes towards
programming more than it improves their
attitudes towards making music so that
as a like somebody with a background in
music education and computer science
education is fascinating that might
imply well maybe this kind of music
making should occur in the cs class
because it has more of an impact on
computer science than it does on music
making at least among these participants
and the way that it was framed here
another question that we must ask is
well what could we change about the
design of the
instruction or the experience to make it
so that it improves the attitudes for
music making more than programming and
if we find that to be the case should
that experience occur in a music class
instead of a cs class or should we just
create an interdiscipline which is like
a combo of music and cs and i argue in
my dissertation that you certainly could
do that especially if you take a look at
the hardware practices that are
discussed in the dissertation itself one
of these days i should probably do an
unpacking scholarship episode on that
but it's like 300 pages something like
that i don't know i wrote it a while ago
here's another really interesting
finding so i'm gonna read this quote
from page seven quote the students with
prior experience only in programming and
of six and both programming and music in
a four had the highest averages for all
attitude sub-scales in t1 and t2 those
students without prior experiences in
either music or programming end of eight
had the lowest average for both subjects
these findings reflect that prior
programming experience positively
affects attitudes more than those
without apprehension about learning
programming or trying something new may
be the reason why students without prior
experience in programming have the
lowest averages in quote that is a
really interesting finding so if you had
prior experience with programming or
programming and music you had higher
averages for your attitudes on the
experience but if you did not have prior
experiences in music and programming
then you had the lowest attitude
averages this is one of the things that
i've talked about before when you
combine two different subject areas
you're having to learn two domains
simultaneously and that from like a
cognitive load experience might be a bit
overwhelming for some students if you
have experience in at least one of them
then you can at least build off of that
schema that you have developed in that
other domain but if you are creating two
different schema one free music one for
programming simultaneously that might be
a bit overwhelming so that is a really
interesting finding for us to consider
in computer science education because
maybe instead of integrating computer
science into other areas like science
and cs together maybe that is actually
going to cause some overwhelm like it
did in this scenario if students are
brand new to learning science or a
particular area like i don't know
biology or something and they're brand
new to learning programming they might
actually perform worse in both of those
areas in terms of their attitudes or
maybe even their content understanding
something to consider and it's something
that we don't really talk about much in
the field in my opinion alright so let's
look at the subscales so 4.2 it talks
about enjoyment so 75 of the students
had positive attitudes toward the
experience and that for most of the
students that it increased their
enjoyment of programming significantly
then here's a quote from page seven
quote these responses help to identify
the dominant theme that emerged from the
qualitative data novelty of making music
with code this theme helps explain why
students enjoyed the unit of work which
was a new experience for all students in
quote this is really really important
the novelty of an activity is extremely
important to consider because that
novelty can wear off
really fast so for example in the
district that i previously worked in i
was given access to basically everything
under the sun that related to
makerspaces they wanted to test it out
in the makerspace class that i had it
was a middle school elective that had a
really long waiting list for students to
get into because it was an elective
where they just got to kind of explore a
bunch of maker activities however they
wanted to often kids would find
something to be really engaging and
interesting like physical computing or
something and about a week later maybe a
couple weeks later they would lose all
interest in it it was fun for a limited
amount of time but once they've
exhausted everything that you can do
with that thing then students would
often want to move on to something else
the same thing could happen in these
like interdisciplinary contexts students
who are really interested in making
music with code might be like wow this
is really cool they dive into it for a
little bit and then they might get bored
with it that happened with a lot of
students that i worked with where they
would try it out for maybe a quarter and
then after that they just wanted to go
back to making games in scratch so
something we really need to consider
when doing this is we need to do more
longitudinal studies of not only like
these interdisciplinary intersections
but also
with like physical computing just
because students have a lot of fun with
beebot for a lesson or two doesn't mean
it's something that is worth investing
in if they lose all interest in it a
couple weeks later especially if you
have an entire unit that might be a
semester long or a year long that
involves that particular device or
whatever device i'll in my rant there
the next section 4.3 is on the
importance so the author found that the
important subscale increased for most of
the students significantly there's
actually a figure on page seven that you
can check out you can see the increase
in scores there as well as on page 8
there are some quotes from different
students i kind of talked about
different themes related to like the
novelty of coding music or enjoying
coding music or that they like the
creative aspect of programming these are
all very important themes to consider
when exploring this kind of engagement
right so the next subsection talks about
the qualitative results and so give some
different examples for some responses
like you could get a job that pays a lot
of money doing this or we use technology
a lot or i want to learn how to program
robots because everything is being taken
over by robots etc here's a quote from
page nine quote programming was commonly
reported as a valuable skill to learn by
many participants regardless of their
prior experience in this skill it was
unclear whether this theme emerged
because of students exposure to sonic pi
specifically or the unit of work end
quote which is a really good point i'm
glad the author mentioned that it could
also just be like pervasive discourse
outside of the schools is like
programming is important everyone needs
to learn how to do this but a question
that i've got is okay well they might
see the importance of it but do they
actually want to continue to learn
programming like myself there are a lot
of things i'm like yeah that's really
important for people to know you can
make a lot of money doing that
particular skill for a job but i don't
want to not everything that's important
in society is important to me but that's
just my opinion alright so the next
subsection that starts on page nine
talks about the anxiety so it was saying
that the qualitative responses said that
actually engaging in this decrease the
anxiety in programming significantly for
the participants in the study here's an
interesting quote though from page nine
quote these findings indicate that
students with prior programming
experience had much less anxiety than
those without initially however all
students were able to significantly
reduce their anxiety with exposure to
sonic pi by the end of the unit of work
end quote now i guess one question that
i'd have for that is how would that
compare to other things like if you did
stuff in scratch or javascript in
khan academy or whatever is it just the
exposure to programming and going oh
it's not as hard as i thought it was or
is this specifically the exposure to
programming through
ruby and sonic pi ruby being the
language and sonic pi being in the
platform but i don't know here's one
more final quote from page nine quote
while the quantitative results indicated
a decrease in anxiety these reflections
suggest students perceptions of
programming as a difficult skill to
learn may have contributed to their
sense of anxiety notably no instances
were recorded of students who thought
programming is easy or comparatively
difficult to other subjects end quote
which if you listen to the interview
with bob irving the second one in
particular he talks about his book
called hard fun and i think that kind of
like really summarizes this no
programming isn't easy but it's also a
lot of fun so you can enjoy it but know
that it's going to push you a little bit
in terms of your understanding most
likely alright so in the discussion
section starts on page nine author
mentions that hey this might be an
effective way to introduce programming
to students around ages 11 and 12. i
agree i've done it in that age group
i've done it younger again as young as
fourth grade but an interesting quote
from page nine says quote while both
males and females saw increases in
attitudes from t1 to t2 males generally
began with more positive attitudes in t1
additionally the unit of work had a
greater positive effect on males in t2
for programming end quote that's a
really interesting finding i'm kind of
wondering out loud how much of it had to
do with the kind of music that they were
making tends to lend itself toward edm
and so depending on how you teach it the
different styles and genres of music
that you explore might be favored by
some students more than others so that
might have an effect so if i were to
teach you how to use sonic pi to create
heavy metal music that might resonate
with some people
more than people who would prefer it be
taught to create pop music or
trap or rap or hip-hop or whatever
here's one more quote that i want to
read from page 10 quote those with prior
experiences in programming have the
highest average increase from t1 to t2
in all sub-scales end quote that is
important a thought that i have on that
is does that have to do with like
expanding
students understandings of what you can
actually do with programming and
computer science maybe they had like a
narrow scope of their understanding of
what you could do with cs like some
blinders on like oh all you can do is
program databases with sql sql and then
when they see this they're like oh you
can actually make music with this i had
no idea and so maybe that increased
their attitude and if you were to
instead do like javascript khan academy
stuff which focuses on art and animation
would that also have a similar increase
in their attitudes but i don't know a
lot of how the media portrays like
computer scientists is like some lone
hacker sitting in a dark basement with
like neon lights and edm playing really
loud then when they see something that's
not that well sort of not that then
maybe they go oh there's some other cool
things you can do all right so normally
in these episodes i like to end with
some lingering thoughts and questions
but i actually kind of embedded them
throughout because i thought it made
more sense in this particular episode i
really enjoyed reading this paper as
somebody with multiple degrees in music
education and having taught computer
science education for the last several
years i really enjoyed this intersection
if you want to check out some of the
other presentations publications and
podcasts that i've done on the
intersections of music and cs make sure
you check out the show notes at
jaredlery.com and if this podcast
interested you please consider sharing
with somebody else for sharing a review
on whatever platform you're listening to
this on thank you so much for listening
stay tuned next week for another episode
and until then i hope you're staying
safe and are having a wonderful week
Article
Petrie, C. (2021). Programming music with Sonic Pi promotes positive attitudes for beginners. Computers & Education, 179(March 2021), 1–13.
Abstract
“Programming is often misaligned with beginner students’ interests and viewed as difficult. However, most students and teachers are not aware that it is possible to utilise domain-specific programming languages that combine programming with other domains like music making. Sonic Pi is one free domain-specific programming platform that enables beginners to code music, which has been designed for and used in schools since its first release in 2012. However, there is a lack of academic research on the Sonic Pi platform about the extent it may affect beginner student attitudes towards programming in a school context. The aim of this study was to investigate the extent Sonic Pi may help to promote positive attitudes towards programming. A mixed-methods case study was developed and trialled in school time with a middle school class, which measured student attitudes with the three subscales of enjoyment, importance, and anxiety. Overall, the results confirmed an alternative hypothesis that all students’ subscales for programming attitude increased significantly. While these findings are not generalisable due to its limited scope, they are very positive to inform the design and use of platforms like Sonic Pi in comparison to similar music coding platforms like EarSketch and TunePad.”
Author Keywords
Interdisciplinary projects, applications in subject areas, improving classroom teaching
My One Sentence Summary
This paper investigates student attitudes around enjoyment, importance, and anxiety when coding music through Sonic Pi.
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