Grateful hat tip to the Arts and Management Technology Lab at Carnegie Mellon University for calling attention to Blob Opera, a fun little experiment on Google Arts and Culture.
It introduces concepts about pitch, sung vowel sounds and the highest voice leading harmony in the quick tutorial where you drag blob figures that sing the bass, tenor, mezzo and soprano parts. From there you can play around, record, and share your own compositions.
There is a pre-recorded selection of Christmas carols you can play, but even those you can manipulate by taking control of the figures mid-concert, selectively muting different parts.
Even if your organization isn’t involved with opera, this can be something interesting to share in newsletters and on social media accounts to erode any sense of intimidation people may feel regarding creative arts.
Also, you may want to bookmark it and fool around with it yourself on occasion. Colorful blobs singing vowel sounds operatically has a soothing, therapeutic quality.
