Amazon today announced a new addition to its Amazon Future Engineer program – a music remix competition that teaches students how to write code that makes music. Alongside Georgia Tech and their learn-to-code-through music platform, EarSketch, participating high school students have the opportunity to win prizes by composing an original remix featuring original music stems from Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter Ciara and her song, “SET” from her latest album Beauty Marks. All high school students across the country are encouraged to enter the competition now through January 20th. Teaching guides are available for teachers to bring the competition to their classroom, or as part of their introductory computer science curriculum.
Students will use computer science and coding to build their remix using musical samples from Ciara’s song “SET,” as well as other sounds from the EarSketch library. Students will learn looping (repeating) to extend the length of their song, use strings to create new beats, create custom functions representing different song sections, and learn to upload their own sounds to the EarSketch library.
The top three student winners will each receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington to be an “Amazon Future Engineer” for the day. Additional winners will receive a PreSonus Audiobox 96 Studio and Amazon.com Gift Cards. The competition opens today and will close on Monday, January 20 at 11:59 PM EST.
