At the Innovation Center, our mission is to inspire, support, and showcase innovative and interdisciplinary projects that bring creativity to life across the Adelphi community. An example of this mission in action was last year’s tech exhibit, Electric Circuits and Music Improvisation: a musical station where students tapped conductive pads shaped like musical notes on a staff mounted on a display board. Doing so would close an electric circuit and activate a computer program to play the corresponding note. At the same time, a jazzy turnaround chord progression and drum beat played in the background. Because the station was designed to use only the notes of the pentatonic scale (C, D, E, G, and A), it was easy for participants to create their own great sounding jazz improv track, with no musical experience required! Paired with a one-page handout explaining the underlying music theory, this project naturally blended Music, Physics, and Computer Science into an engaging hands-on experience.

This year, we wanted to rekindle that same creative energy and make it accessible to an even broader audience. Much of our recent work has focused on building web browser-based applications that run on laptops and smartphones without requiring installation – tools designed with accessibility and ease of use in mind. Taking this approach, we recreated last year’s musical demo as an interactive web app. The new Music Improvisation app allows users to play notes using a keyboard or a touchscreen, animating the corresponding keys on a piano, and improvise over a built-in accompaniment track. Users can also record, download, and share their compositions. Whether you’re experimenting with music for the first time or shaping melodies with purpose, the app provides a fun way to explore and create music.

In alignment with our commitment to openness and education, the project is freely available on our GitHub repository, including the full source code for anyone interested in learning from or building upon it. You can also see the app in action on our YouTube channel, where we demonstrate how easily users can create their own music. We’re excited to share this project and we can’t wait to hear the creative melodies it inspires!