Barbara Menicucci

“Catch the Wave”, Menicucci’s innovative program idea, is a collaborative science and music project designed to teach students about sound and other types of waves. It will give students a tactile experience generating notes while also creating a visual representation of different frequencies of sound waves. It also will help students understand the concepts of loudness, intervals, pitch, harmony, and quality of sound. Understanding time signatures, pitch, and intervals, along with counting beats, can help students develop their music sight-reading skills. The use of technology also will be incorporated. Using small MIDFI keyboards and laptops, pairs of students will be able to generate sound waves and examine their characteristics using software and the Internet. This hands-on, collaborative approach between the music and science departments will allow students to see how one sound wave can be bounced off surfaces to create specific notes. Menicucci, who lives in Albuquerque, hopes her program will help students understand scientific concepts that are such a big part of understanding the world at large.