synths 4 toddlers

[Curtin, Steven D (Steven)]

Hi Paul- Great idea!

The British composer Trevor Wishart has advocated such a device as well,
using some kind of touch panel to allow stretching and shaping of sampled or
other electronic sound.  

Our almost five year old son has a lot of fun with the Theremax and joystick
controllers on the modular, and can also select patches and drum patterns on
a Yamaha portakeyboard.  

He also likes the STEIM "Kraklebox" I brought back from my stay there- it's
a little box with a bunch of touch switches as its only source of control
that makes outrageous, totally unrepeatable sounds.  

One organization that would probably love to see this is MusikGarten, they
sell simple instruments for teaching children about music.  Whatever is
built would have to be simple and cheap, on the order of TomG's
minitheremin.  It would also have to be indistructable :).

http://www.musikgarten.org/f_teachers.htm

Steve C

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Steven Curtin  
Lucent Technologies Microelectronics
ph: (732)949-4404   fax: (732)949-6711
http://curtin.emf.org
sdcurtin at lucent.com
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> ----------
> From: 	Paul Perry[SMTP:pfperry at melbpc.org.au]
> Sent: 	Monday, April 03, 2000 5:13 AM
> To: 	synth-diy at node12b53.a2000.nl
> Subject: 	synths 4 toddlers
> 
> Anyone ever built a synth for young kiddies?
> Any hints or recommendations?
> I'm thinking of the sort of thig where they could
> 'play' them by varying contact resistance as they
> grabbed parts, tilted them to start envelopes etc.
> 
> paul perry melbourne australia
>