On the Subject of Musical Hexabuttons

These buttons belong in a musical.

When not in recording mode, you can press any non-center button as many times as you’ll like. Each button will play a note when pressed.

One of the non-center buttons will display the note that it is playing. Compare this button to the rest of them to figure out what the other notes the buttons are playing.

The center button will display 3 characters. Use the table below using each character to get the order of the notes to be read:

0	TR MR	6	ML MR	C	BR MR	I	ML BL	O	TR BR
1	TL MR	7	MR ML	D	BL TL	J	TL ML	P	BR TR
2	TR ML	8	MR TL	E	MR BL	K	ML TR	Q	BL MR
3	BL BR	9	BL TR	F	TR BL	L	ML BR	R	TR TL
4	TL TR	A	BR BL	G	BL ML	M	BR ML	S	MR BR
5	MR TR	B	BR TL	H	TL BL	N	TL BR	T	ML TL

Finally, take each note and its positions in the order you obtained in the table below to get the order that the buttons need to be pressed while in recording mode:

	C	C#/Db	D	D#/Eb	E	F	F#/Gb	G	G#/Ab	A	A#/Bb	B
1	MR	BR	TR	ML	BL	TL	ML	BR	TR	TL	MR	BL
2	BL	TL	MR	TR	ML	BR	TL	MR	BR	TR	BL	ML
3	TL	ML	BR	BL	TR	MR	MR	ML	BL	BR	TR	TL
4	BR	BL	ML	TL	MR	TR	TR	BL	TL	MR	ML	BR
5	ML	TR	TL	MR	BR	BL	BL	TL	MR	ML	BR	TR
6	TR	MR	BL	BR	TL	ML	BR	TR	ML	BL	TL	MR

To enter recording mode, press the center button. It will start flashing indicating recording mode. One way to get out of recording mode is to press the center button again. The second way to get out of recording mode is to strike on the module by pressing a button in the wrong order.

When getting out of recording mode, the center button will no longer flash, and any buttons that were pressed will be back up.

Advanced Music Knowledge

Intervals: An interval is the distance between 2 pitches. There are 12 distinct intervals that our ears can differentiate. The audio files down below play each distinct interval with the info above it being the interval name followed by the distance between the 2 notes:

Perfect Unison: 0	Minor 2nd: 1
Major 2nd: 2	Minor 3rd: 3
Major 3rd: 4	Perfect 4th: 5
Tritone: 6	Perfect 5th: 7
Minor 6th: 8	Major 6th: 9
Minor 7th: 10	Major 7th: 11

Ex: Using the keyboard below, the distance between D and F is 3 which makes it a Minor 3rd.

Note: The keyboard wraps around so if you hear a Perfect 5th going down from an E, that other note is an A. There can be intervals on this module that is longer than a Major 7th. In cases like that, treat the intervals like they wrap around too (12 - Perfect Unison, 13 - Minor 2nd, etc.).