22 The Week Junior • 19 March 2022
On screen
ANCIENT
FOOTPRINTS
tinyurl.com/
TWJ-footprints
The earliest
known human
footprints outside Africa may have been
discovered... on a beach in Norfolk, England. This
Natural History Museum video tells you more
about the Happisburgh footprints.I
f you’ve got a lot of musical ideas in your head but
haven’t got an instrument to help get them out,
well, there are plenty of websites and apps that could
be useful.
Chrome Music Lab (tinyurl.com/TWJ-chromelab)
is a collection of music-creation tools from Google.
Song Maker, for example, lets you choose a virtual
instrument and construct a song by clicking or
tapping to place coloured squares on a grid. Google
is also behind the marvellous Blob Opera (tinyurl.
com/TWJ-blobs) where you make music by dragging
around four colourful blob-shaped opera singers.
Oceanwaves (tinyurl.com/TWJ-ocean) is a clever
website where you can make music by dragging
and dropping sounds into place. You can also invite
friends to do it with you, making tracks together over
the internet.Online music makers
Become a virtual
DJ on Roblox.PUZZLE
QUEST 3
The Puzzle Quest
games have
always combined
monsters, battles
and match-3 puzzling. This latest game for
Android and Apple devices, as well as PCs, sends
you on quests where you fight by moving gems
to make matches on a grid.HIGHBROW
DICTIONARY
This colourful app for Apple
devices is fantastic for helping
you add new words to your
vocabulary: brittle, ingenious,
relentless, rancid and many
more. It’s free but needs
registration, so ask an adult
to help you with that.Try these sites and apps to start creating songs and beats.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK APP OF THE WEEK
PEOP
LE^
POW
ER^Singing
with^ o
ther^ pe
ople^
helps^ y
our^ body^ releas
e^a^ chem
ical^ tha
t^ gives
you^positive
feelings.^
AP
PLE
·^ GOO
GLE·^ SPLASHGAME OF THE WEEK
Roland50 (roland50.studio) is a free site that
celebrates some famous drum machines and
synthesisers by letting you play virtual versions of
them. It may seem complicated at first sight but really
it’s just about clicking to create patterns for drums,
basslines and melodies, then experimenting with
virtual dials to change the sounds.
Mobile apps GroovePad (tinyurl.com/TWJ-
groovepad) and Noise (tinyurl.com/TWJ-noise) are also fun for working on musical ideas
by tapping buttons and creating patterns.
If you’re wanting to do more than just noodle
around, software and apps such as Soundtrap Studio
(soundtrap.com), BandLab (bandlab.com) and
Apple’s GarageBand (tinyurl.com/TWJ-garageband)
give you a selection of beats, sounds and virtual
instruments. They also let you record your own
singing or playing.
Finally, Roblox has its own music-making game
called Splash (tinyurl.com/TWJ-splash) in which you
become a virtual DJ. You can create your own tunes
from its collections of beats and melody loops and
play them live to your friends on the dancefloor.
Whether you’re making tracks for fun or want a
career in music, these tools will get you started and
give you the confidence to explore further.Apple’s
GarageBand.The singers of
Blob Opera.