MaKey MaKey Experiments

W3
MaKey MaKey Experiments

For this week's project, Ru and I created a music interface using MaKey MaKey, a computer,  the MK-1 sampling keyboard simulator, and some polymer clay. 

(https://ericrosenbaum.github.io/MK-1/)

We first took out some clay and put them on a piece of paper. The clay representing the up, down, left and right arrows are grouped together on the left, the white clay represents space bar and the rest of them each represents an alphabetic letter.

We then connected each piece of clay to MaKey Makey through wires (regular wires for arrow keys and space bar, smaller wires for the letters) and made sure that MaKey Makey was connected to a laptop. Then, holding the earth wire, we were able to play music just by pressing the clay (which plays notes from the keyboard simulation).

Here's a video of one of our songs! :)

We mainly tried the keyboard simulator in our experiment, but it would be fun if other people's MaKey MaKey interfaces were connected to simulators of different instruments so that we can play as an orchestra!

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Combining MaKey MaKey and Scratch in a music classroom, we can create a fun, engaging music lesson for students aged 7-10. In this lesson, students are introduced to different instruments and will learn to distinguish the sounds they produce.

First, we can create a Scratch project that shows students what instruments look like, and when they click on the images, they get to hear how they sound. 

Then, students can each pick an instrument they like and open the simulator for that instrument on a computer. These simulators can be played via Makey Makey interfaces that have similar physical characteristics as the instruments. Students first get to explore the interfaces on their own, so that they can establish their own interests in playing certain instruments and learn about the relationship between their actions (how they play the instrument) and the resulting sounds.

Before class ends, the instructor can take over the role of the 'conductor' and assign each student a musical note; then, students play a song together as a class. This trains students to distinguish different musical notes (know which note is assigned to them and how different notes sound) as well as helps them to learn about rhythm (how to jump in at the right time).