Makey Makey Something Awesome Part 3: It's alive!

Like Dr. Frankenstein (pronounced FRANK-ehn-stheen), I have created.

Here is a video of the first time I played the set in my classroom.  Later, I had to remove the kick drum beater and replace it with a foil covered chopstick to keep from destroying the kick drum.  Overall, I am pretty excited with the way it turned out.  

Here is the link for the Scratch program that powers the set.   

Makey Makey Something Awesome Part the Second

This has been pretty fun!

After going through two initial designs, here is the rack I created.   (This is my happy place.  Pardon the mess.)

The parts are 1 inch PVC, tee joints, and elbows all from the local hardware store.  

The best $12 investment I have ever made was the PVC cutter I bought pictured on the piano bench.  No sawing, no dust...just clean quick cuts!  Also, it doubles as a spy "interrogation" tool in a pinch, with a great suspenseful 'click, click, click' as the blade ratchets down.  That's a bonus, just for you.

I decided to make a drum rack instead of individual stands for each of the pieces.  It's was a lot easier to design and manipulate, and cut down the measuring time exponentially.  From right to left the drums are going to be:

1. Snare
2. Hi Hat
3. High Tom
4. Crash
5. Bass
6. Ride 

The plan is to craft some drum heads from cardboard and foil.  Glue is the medium of choice to get the heads on the rack, so we will see what happens...  

MakeyMakey Something Awesome Part the First

One of my goals this school year is to create the projects I am assigning to my students.  One of the projects is creating a homemade instrument.  For mine, I am making a homemade electronic drum  kit with the MakeyMakey and samples in Scratch.

 Here's a vid of the very early stages of testing: