CHAPTER 9

Xylophone

It’s hard to believe that using technology to record and play

back music only dates back to 1878, when Edison patented the
phonograph. We’ve come so far since then—with music synthe-
sizers, CDs, sampling and remixing, phones that play music,
and even long-distance jamming over the Internet. In this chap-
ter, you’ll take part in this tradition by building a Xylophone app
that records and plays music.

What You’ll Build

With the app shown in Figure 9-1 (originally created by Liz
Looney of the App Inventor
team), you can:

• Play eight different notes by touching colored

buttons on the screen.
• Press a Play button to replay the notes you played
earlier.
• Press a Reset button to make the app clear any
notes you played earlier so that you can enter a
new song.
Figure 9-1. The Xylophone app user
interface

What You’ll Learn

This tutorial covers the following concepts:

• Using a single Sound component to play different audio files.

• Using the Clock component to measure and enforce delays between actions.
• Deciding when to create a procedure.
• Creating a procedure that calls itself.
• Advanced use of lists, including adding items, accessing them, and clearing the
list.
132 Chapter 9: Xylophone

Getting Started
Connect to the App Inventor website and start a new project. Name it “Xylophone”,
and also set the screen’s title to “Xylophone”. Connect your app to your device or
emulator.

Designing the Components

This app has 13 different components (8 of which comprise the keyboard), which are
listed in Table 9-1. Because there are so many, it would get pretty boring to create all
of them before starting to write our program, so we’ll break down the app into its
functional parts and build them sequentially by going back and forth between the
Designer and the Blocks Editor, as we did with the Ladybug Chase app in Chapter 5.

Table 9-1. All of the components for the Xylophone app

Component type Palette group What you’ll name it Purpose

Button User Interface Button1 Play Low C key.

Button User Interface Button2 Play D key.

Button User Interface Button3 Play E key.

Button User Interface Button4 Play F key.

Button User Interface Button5 Play G key.

Button User Interface Button6 Play A key.

Button User Interface Button7 Play B key.

Button User Interface Button8 Play High C key.

Sound Media Sound1 Play the notes.

Button User Interface PlayButton Play back the song.

Button User Interface ResetButton Reset the song memory.

HorizontalArrange Layout HorizontalArrange Place the Play and Reset buttons next to each other.
ment ment1

Clock User Interface Clock1 Keep track of delays between notes.

 Creating the Keyboard 133

Creating the Keyboard

Our user interface will include an eight-note keyboard for a pentatonic (seven-note)
major scale ranging from Low C to High C. We will create this musical keyboard in this
section.

Creating the First Note Buttons

Start by creating the first two xylophone keys, which we will implement as buttons.

1. From the User Interface category, drag a Button onto the screen. Leave its name
as Button1. We want it to be a long magenta bar, like that on a xylophone, so set
its properties as follows:

• Change the BackgroundColor property to Magenta.

• Change the Text property to “C”.
• Set the Width property to “Fill parent” so that it spans all the way across the
screen.
• Set the Height property to 40 pixels.

2. Repeat for a second Button, named Button2, placing it below Button1. Use the
same Width and Height property values, but set its BackgroundColor property to
Red and its Text property to “D”.

(Later, we will repeat step 2 for six more note buttons.)

The view in the Component Designer should look something like Figure 9-2.

Figure 9-2. Placing buttons to create a keyboard

The display on your phone should look similar, although there will not be any empty
space between the two colored buttons.
134 Chapter 9: Xylophone

Adding the Sound Component

We can’t have a xylophone without sounds, so drag in a Sound component, leaving its
name as Sound1. Change the MinimumInterval property from its default value of 500
milliseconds to 0. This allows us to play the sound as often as we want, instead of hav-
ing to wait half a second (500 milliseconds) between plays. Don’t set its Source prop-
erty, which we will set in the Blocks Editor.
Download the sound files: http://appinventor.org/bookFiles/Xylophone/1.wav and
http://appinventor.org/bookFiles/Xylophone/2.wav. Unlike in previous chapters, where
it was okay to change the names of media files, it is important to use these exact
names for reasons that will soon become clear. You can upload the remaining six
sound files when directed to later.

Connecting the Sounds to the Buttons

The behavior we need to program is for a sound file to play when the corresponding
button is clicked. Specifically, if Button1 is clicked, we’d like to play 1.wav; if Button2 is
clicked, we’d like to play 2.wav; and so on. We can set this up in the Blocks Editor, as
shown in Figure 9-3, by doing the following:

1. From the Button1 drawer, drag out the Button1.Click block.

2. From the Sound1 drawer, drag out the set Sound1.Source block, placing it in the
Button1.Click block.
3. Type “text” to create a text block. (This is quicker than going to the Built-In tab
and then the Text drawer, although that would work, too.) Set its text value to
“1.wav” and place it in the Sound1.Source block.
4. Add a Sound1.Play block.

Figure 9-3. Playing a sound when a button is clicked

We could do the same for Button2, as shown in Figure 9-4 (just changing the text
value), but the code would be awfully repetitive.

Figure 9-4. Adding more sounds

 Creating the Keyboard 135

Repeated code is a good sign that you should create a procedure, which you’ve
already done in the MoleMash game in Chapter 3 and the Ladybug Chase game in
Chapter 5. Specifically, we’ll create a procedure that takes a number as a parameter,
sets Sound1’s Source to the appropriate file, and plays the sound. This is another exam-
ple of refactoring—improving a program’s implementation without changing its
behavior, a concept introduced in the MoleMash tutorial. We can use the Text draw-
er’s join block to combine the number (e.g., 1) and the text “.wav” to create the
proper filename (e.g., “1.wav”). Here are the steps for creating the procedure we need:

1. Under the Built-In tab, go to the Procedures drawer and drag out the to proce
dure do block. (Unless otherwise specified, you should choose the version with
“do”, not “result”.)
2. Add the parameter by clicking on the little blue icon on the to procedure do
block, dragging over an input, and changing its name from “x” to “number”. You
might want to review Figure 5-6 from Chapter 5.
3. Click the name of the procedure, which by default is “procedure” and set it to
“PlayNote”.
4. Drag the Sound1.Source block from Button1.Click into PlayNote to the right of
the word “do”. Move the Sound1.Play block into PlayNote as well.
5. Drag the 1.wav block into the trash can.
6. From the Text drawer, drag the join block into Sound1.Source’s socket.
7. Type “number” and move it to the top socket of the join block (if it is not already
there).
8. From the Text drawer, drag the text block into the second socket of the join
block.
9. Change the text value to “.wav”. (Remember not to type the quotation marks.)
10. From the Procedures drawer, drag out a call PlayNote block and place into the
empty body of Button1.Click.
11. Type “1” and put it in the “number” socket.

Now, when Button1 is clicked, the procedure PlayNote will be called, with its number
parameter having the value 1. It should set Sound1.Source to “1.wav” and play the
sound.
Create a similar Button2.Click block with a call to PlayNote with a parameter of 2.
(You can copy the existing call PlayNote block and move it into the body of But
ton2.Click, making sure to change the parameter.) Your program should look like
Figure 9-5.
136 Chapter 9: Xylophone

Figure 9-5. Creating a procedure to play a note

Instructing Android to Load the Sounds

If you tried out the preceding calls to PlayNote, you might have been disappointed by
not hearing the sound you expected or by experiencing an error or unexpected delay.
That’s because Android needs to load sounds at runtime, which entails some lag
before they can be played. This issue didn’t come up earlier because filenames placed
in a Sound component’s Source property in the Designer are automatically loaded
when the program starts. Because we don’t set Sound1.Source until after the program
has started, that initialization process does not take place. We have to explicitly load
the sounds when the program starts up, as shown in Figure 9-6.

Figure 9-6. Loading sounds when the app launches

Test your app Touch the buttons and check if the notes play without
delay. (If you don’t hear anything, make sure that the media volume
on your phone is not set to mute.)

Implementing the Remaining Notes

Now that we have the first two buttons and notes implemented and working, add the
remaining six notes by going back to the Designer and downloading the sound files:

• http://appinventor.org/bookFiles/Xylophone/3.wav
• http://appinventor.org/bookFiles/Xylophone/4.wav
• http://appinventor.org/bookFiles/Xylophone/5.wav
 Creating the Keyboard 137

• http://appinventor.org/bookFiles/Xylophone/6.wav
• http://appinventor.org/bookFiles/Xylophone/7.wav
• http://appinventor.org/bookFiles/Xylophone/8.wav

Then, create six new buttons, following the same steps as you did for the previous
two but setting their Text and BackgroundColor properties as follows:

• Button3 (“E”, Pink)

• Button4 (“F”, Orange)
• Button5 (“G”, Yellow)
• Button6 (“A”, Green)
• Button7 (“B”, Cyan)
• Button8 (“C”, Blue)

You might also want to change Button8’s TextColor property to White, as shown in
Figure 9-7, so it is more legible.

Figure 9-7. Putting the remaining buttons and sounds in the Component Designer

Back in the Blocks Editor, create Click blocks for each of the new buttons with appro-
priate calls to PlayNote. Similarly, add each new sound file to Screen.Initialize, as
shown in Figure 9-8.
138 Chapter 9: Xylophone

Figure 9-8. Programming the button click events to correspond to all the keyboard keys

Test your app You should now have all the buttons, and each one
will play a different note when you click it.

Recording and Playing Back Notes

Playing notes by pressing buttons is fun, but being able to record and play back songs
is even better. To implement playback, we will need to maintain a record of played
notes. In addition to remembering the pitches (sound files) that were played, we must
also record the amount of time between notes, or we won’t be able to distinguish
between two notes played in quick succession and two played with a 10-second
silence between them.
Our app will maintain two lists, each of which will have one entry for each note that
has been played:

• notes, which will contain the names of the sound files in the order in which they
were played.
• times, which will record the points in time at which the notes were played.
 Recording and Playing Back Notes 139

Note Before continuing, you might want to review lists, which are
covered in the Presidents Quiz in Chapter 8 and in Chapter 19.

We can get the timing information from a Clock component, which we will also use to
properly time the notes for playback.

Adding the Components

In the Designer, you will need to add a Clock component and Play and Reset buttons,
which you will put in a HorizontalArrangement:

1. From the Sensors drawer, drag in a Clock component. It will appear in the “Non-
visible components” section. Uncheck its TimerEnabled property because we
don’t want its timer to go off until we tell it to during playback.
2. Go to the Layout drawer and drag a HorizontalArrangement component beneath
the existing button. Set its Width property to “Fill parent.”
3. From the User Interface drawer, drag in a Button. Rename it "PlayButton" and set
its Text property to “Play”.
4. Drag in another Button, placing it to the right of PlayButton. Rename the new
Button "ResetButton" and set its Text property to “Reset”.

The Designer view should look like Figure 9-9.

Figure 9-9. Adding components for recording and playing back sounds
140 Chapter 9: Xylophone

Recording Notes and Times

We now need to add the correct behavior in the Blocks Editor. We will need to main-
tain lists of notes and times and add to the lists whenever the user presses a button.

1. Create a new variable by going to the Variables drawer and dragging out an
initialize global to block from the Definition drawer.
2. Change the name of the variable to “notes”.
3. Open the Lists drawer and drag a create empty list block out, placing it in the
socket of the initialize global to block.

This defines a new variable named “notes” to be an empty list. Repeat the steps for
another variable, which you should name “times”. These new blocks should look like
those in Figure 9-10.

Figure 9-10. Initialize two variables to store the notes and the timing information

How the blocks work

Whenever a note is played, we need to save both the name of the sound file (to the
list notes) and the instant in time at which it was played (to the list times). To record
the instant in time, we will use the Clock1.Now block, which returns the current
instant in time (e.g., March 12, 2011, 8:33:14 AM), to the nearest millisecond. These
values, obtained through the Sound1.Source and Clock1.Now blocks, should be added
to the lists notes and times, respectively, as shown in Figure 9-11.

Figure 9-11. Adding the sounds played to the list

 Recording and Playing Back Notes 141

For example, if you play “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” [C C C D E], your lists would end
up having five entries, which might appear as follows:

• notes: 1.wav, 1.wav, 1.wav, 2.wav, 3.wav

• times [dates omitted]: 12:00:01, 12:00:02, 12:00:03, 12:00:03.5, 12:00:04

When the user presses the Reset button, we want the two lists to go back to their
original, empty states. Because the user won’t see any change, it’s nice to add a small
Sound1.Vibrate block to indicate that the key click was registered. Figure 9-12 shows
the blocks for this behavior.

Figure 9-12. Providing feedback when the user resets the app

Playing Back Notes

As a thought experiment, let’s first look at how to implement note playback without
worrying about timing. We could (but won’t) do this by creating these blocks as
shown in Figure 9-13:

• A variable count to keep track of which note we’re on.

• A new procedure, PlayBackNote, which plays that note and moves on to the next
one.
• Code to run when PlayButton is pressed that sets the count to 1 and calls Play
BackNote unless there are no saved notes.
142 Chapter 9: Xylophone

Figure 9-13. Playing back the recorded notes

How the blocks work

This might be the first time you’ve seen a procedure make a call to itself. Even though
at first glance this might seem bogus, it is in fact an important and powerful com-
puter science concept called recursion.
To get a better idea of how recursion works, let’s step through what happens if a user
plays/records three notes (1.wav, 3.wav, and 6.wav) and then presses the Play button.
First, PlayButton.Click starts running. Because the length of the list notes is 3, which
is greater than 0, count is set to 1, and PlayBackNote is called:

1. The first time PlayBackNote is called, count = 1:

• Sound1.Source is set to the first item in notes, which is 1.wav.

• Sound1.Play is called, playing this note.
• Because count (1) is less than the length of notes (3), count is incremented to 2,
and PlayBackNote is called again.

2. The second time PlayBackNote is called, count = 2:

• Sound1.Source is set to the second item in notes, which is 3.wav.

• Sound1.Play is called, playing this note.
• Because count (2) is less than the length of notes (3), count is incremented to 3,
and PlayBackNote is called again.
 Recording and Playing Back Notes 143

3. The third time PlayBackNote is called, count = 3:

• Sound1.Source is set to the third item in notes, which is 6.wav.

• Sound1.Play is called, playing this note.
• Because count (3) is not less than the length of notes (3), nothing else happens,
and playback is complete.

Note Although recursion is powerful, it can also be dangerous. As a

thought experiment, ask yourself what would have happened if the
programmer forgot to insert the blocks in PlayBackNote that incre-
mented count.

Although the recursion is correct, there is a different problem with the preceding
example: almost no time passes between one call to Sound1.Play and the next, so
each note is interrupted by the next note, except for the last one. No note (except for
the last) is allowed to complete before Sound1’s source is changed and Sound1.Play is
called again. To achieve the correct behavior, we need to implement a delay between
calls to PlayBackNote.

Playing Back Notes with Proper Delays

We will implement the delay by setting the timer on the clock to the amount of time
between the current note and the next note. For example, if the next note is played
3,000 milliseconds (3 seconds) after the current note, we will set Clock1.TimerIn
terval to 3,000, after which PlayBackNote should be called again. Make the changes
shown in Figure 9-14 to the body of the if block in PlayBackNote and create and fill in
the Clock1.Timer event handler, which specifies what should happen when the timer
goes off.

Figure 9-14. Adding delays between the notes

144 Chapter 9: Xylophone

How the blocks work

Let’s assume the following contents for the two lists:

• notes: 1.wav, 3.wav, 6.wav

• times: 12:00:00, 12:00:01, 12:00:04

As Figure 9-14 shows, PlayButton.Click sets count to 1 and calls PlayBackNote.

1. The first time PlayBackNote is called, count = 1:

• Sound1.Source is set to the first item in notes, which is “1.wav”.

• Sound1.Play is called, playing this note.
• Because count (1) less than the length of notes (3), Clock1.TimerInterval is set
to the amount of time between the first (12:00:00) and second items in times
(12:00:01): 1 second. count is incremented to 2. Clock1.Timer is enabled and
starts counting down.

Nothing else happens for 1 second, at which time Clock1.Timer runs, temporarily
disabling the timer and calling PlayBackNote.
2. The second time PlayBackNote is called, count = 2:

• Sound1.Source is set to the second item in notes, which is “3.wav”.

• Sound1.Play is called, playing this note.
• Because count (2) less than the length of notes (3), Clock1.TimerInterval is set
to the amount of time between the second (12:00:01) and third items in times
(12:00:04): 3 seconds. count is incremented to 3. Clock1.Timer is enabled and
starts counting down.

Nothing else happens for 3 seconds, at which time Clock1.Timer runs, temporar-
ily disabling the timer and calling PlayBackNote.
3. The third time PlayBackNote is called, count = 3:

• Sound1.Source is set to the third item in notes, which is “6.wav”.

• Sound1.Play is called, playing this note.
• Because count (3) is not less than the length of notes (3), nothing else happens.
Playback is complete.

The Complete App: Xylophone

Figure 9-15 shows the final block configuration for the Xylophone app.
 Variations 145

Figure 9-15. The blocks for Xylophone

Variations
Here are some alternative scenarios to explore:

• Currently, there’s nothing to stop a user from clicking ResetButton during play-
back, which will cause the program to crash. (Can you figure out why?) Modify
PlayButton.Click so it disables ResetButton. To re-enable it when the song is
complete, change the if block in PlayButton.Click into an if else block, and
re-enable ResetButton in the else portion.
• Similarly, the user can currently click PlayButton while a song is already playing.
(Can you figure out what will happen?) Make it so PlayButton.Click disables
PlayButton and changes its text to “Playing...” You can re-enable it and reset the
text in an ifelse block, as described in the previous bullet.
146 Chapter 9: Xylophone

• Add a button with the name of a song, such as “Für Elise”. If the user clicks it, pop-
ulate the notes and times lists with the corresponding values, set count to 1, and
call PlayBackNote. To set the appropriate times, you’ll find the Clock1.MakeIn
stantFromMillis block useful.
• If the user presses a note, goes away and does something else, and then comes
back hours later and presses an additional note, the notes will be part of the same
song, which is probably not what the user intended. Improve the program by 1)
stopping recording after some reasonable interval of time, such as a minute; or, 2)
putting a limit on the amount of time used for Clock1.TimerInterval by using
the max block from the Math drawer.
• Visually indicate which note is playing by changing the appearance of the button
—for example, by changing its Text, BackgroundColor, or ForegroundColor.

Summary
Here are some of the ideas we covered in this tutorial:

• You can play different audio files from a single Sound component by changing its
Source property. This enabled us to have one Sound component instead of eight.
Just be sure to load the sounds at initialization to prevent delays (Figure 9-6).
• Lists can provide a program with memory, with a record of user actions stored in
the list and later retrieved and reprocessed. We used this functionality to record
and play back a song.
• You can use the Clock component to determine the current time. Subtracting
two time values gives us the amount of time between two events.
• You can set the TimerInterval property for Clock within the program, such as
how we set it to the duration of time between the starts of two notes.
• It is not only possible but sometimes desirable for a procedure to make a call to
itself. This is a powerful technique called recursion. When writing a recursive pro-
cedure, make sure that there is a base case in which the procedure ends, rather
than calling itself, or the program will loop infinitely.