I am sure you will have noticed the latest craze online – Wordle. I have been looking at the pictures everyone has been posting and today it struck me that you could turn Wordle into Music.
What is Wordle?
Wordle is a daily word game where you have to guess a 5 letter word. You have 6 guesses and if you get letters correct it will tell you. It will also let you know if you have the right letter in the wrong place. Now you might have played similar games before, but this one is a hit for one. I love it because there is just one puzzle per day and you can’t get stuck playing it all day. It is addictive, but only allows for a short burst of excitement.
When it comes to well-being I know we need to spend less time on screens. But I think that escaping with Wordle is quite fun!
Rhythm
You might be reading this and think, what is he going on about turning Wordle into music! I totally understand your confusion, but I am a music teacher and I am always seeing things that get me thinking. And so on my walk to work today it dawned on me that the wordle pictures that everyone has been sharing look like rhythms. Well kinda, and if you are a musician you will hopefully know what I mean.
Rhythms can be represented with traditional notation, but also as a grid. So you create a grid, shade out squares and assign them to a drum beat – are you starting to see where I am going with this. If you are a musician then you may have seen a rhythm square or a drum machine before – have fun with this free online Drum Machine.
Let me show you what a standard Rock Beat looks like on a drum machine. This is created in Soundtrap:
You can see what I am getting at now can’t you! Well if not, give me two more minutes.
Wordle into Music
Now I don’t know how well you have done on Wordle, but I want to let you know that the longer it takes, the better the rhythm might be. But having said that I don’t think there is an exact science and this is all just for fun.
Let me show you my Wordle result from today and then explain how to turn it into music:
Now, one issue is that it is a 5 letter word and therefore it doesn’t fit neatly into a 4/4 beat. But of course you can easily get a bit more advanced and create some 5/4 rhythms. Ultimately, don’t overthink it, this is just a bit of fun. And I think I have done all the over-thinking on behalf of the entire nation. I guess it is just nice to highlight how patterns work in music.
Anyway, back to turning this into music. Here is my Wordle result from today in the form of a rhythm:
This could be the starting point for a whole composition – but I don’t have time for that today!
And some notation just to get you really excited:
So there we are, you can see music in anything really. And also, you can often turn something into a teaching moment if you want to.
And if anything, you are now going to try wordle, maybe make a cool drum beat and hopefully this will all put a smile on your face. If you can incorporate this into your teaching somehow then you will be ticking the literacy box and the musical one, not bad for a free online game!
And if you want me to turn your Wordle into a rhythm this just get in touch!