MaKey-MaKey co-creator Eric Rosenbaum recently ran a five day workshop “Music as Material” in Holland focusing on the kit as a tool for creating musical instruments. The video above shares highlights from the workshop.
I watched this through the first time just to enjoy the tremendous diversity of uses they put to the MaKey-MaKey, but I watched it a second time to write notes about a few of the great interface options that they explored.
My favorites: cutting the fingers off a rubber glove and adding foil pads on them for performing by touching fingers to thumb (I’m assuming the thumb was the Earth/ground pad, but I’d have to ask Eric!) Also, the miniature drumkit is just the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. The Internets are likely to love the balloon that makes kitten “meows” every time you bounce it on the floor.
From Eric’s video description:
“Music as Material” was the title of a 5 day workshop I conducted with Michael Smith-Welch at ArtEz Institute of the Arts, in Arnhem, Netherlands. The fifteen participants came from backgrounds including music, computer science, theater, industrial design, and fine arts. The workshop was focused on exploring new ways to create musical instruments by connecting physical materials to digital sounds. Many of the projects used our MaKey MaKey kit to create sound triggers from gloves, balloons, fruit, fur, and other materials. The participants used a variety of music production software, programming tools including Scratch, Processing, OpenFrameworks, and other hardware tools including PicoBoard and Arduino. The pieces shown in the video include “The Glove,” “Music Ball,” “Mini-Drum Set,” “Ambient Accumulation,” “Fruity Looper,” “The Foldable Cord Thingy,” “Gut Reaction,” “Chordotron,” “Balloonophone,” “Atmosfur,” and “Key Effect.” The workshop also included a series of music improvisation games, including “Floor-Head-Hum.”
And check out Eric’s other workshop videos here!
Every Monday is Makey Makey™ Monday here at Adafruit! The MaKey MaKey – by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum, made by JoyLabz! Ever played Mario on Play-Doh or Piano on Bananas? Alligator clip the Internet to Your World. MaKey MaKey is an invention kit for the 21st century. Find out more details at makeymakey.com or watch the video at makeymakey.com. Turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet. It’s a simple Invention Kit for Beginners and Experts doing art, engineering, and everything inbetween! If you have a cool project you’ve made with your Makey Makey be sure to send it in to be featured here!