Isaac W. Glendening - Makerspace Sound and Music Projects for All Ages

Mary L. Glendening is the Director of the Middletown Free Library in Media, Pennsylvania. She has been running maker programs at the library for several years. Mary is the author of From Video Games to Real Life: Tapping into Minecraft to Inspire Creativity and Learning in the Library.

Isaac W. Glendening is one-half of the band Cesium 137. He is a professional audio engineer and owner of Subversive Sound Studio. Isaac introduces kids and teens to the wonders of audio through iPad apps, soft synths, and littleBits.

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We would like to dedicate this book to our son Jimmy.
Hes been our guinea pig for many of the projects
and has inspired us through his love of music and creativity.

Thank you to Bare Conductive for providing us with the Bare Conductive Touch Board Starter Kit and photos for use in this book.

Thank you to Inventables for permission to share a few projects here and allowing us to spread the love for Easel and the Carvey.

Thank you to the young makers who have participated in our music maker programs at the Middletown Free Library. Your participation in our programs was an inspiration in creating this work.

A s with all maker projects, there are special tools, programs, and items you will need to get started with the audio projects presented in this book. You will need to figure out your budget and what kinds of projects you are interested in before diving into purchasing a lot of equipment.

The chapter will take a look at the wide variety of items available for creating sound projects. We will try to present several options for projects using tools and software that give you the most for your money and explore apps and software that are free or low in cost. For example, some audio recording software companies offer their products at several price points, and the number of features available is tied into the tier of software you purchase.

Many apps have a free lite version as well as a paid full version available. Sometimes its a good idea to start off with the free or low-cost option and then move to the more expensive but feature-rich version once you become more familiar and are certain the app is something you wish to explore further and in more depth. Sometimes the free version will be all you need for your projects.

We will start off by taking a look at software and apps that can be used to create music and other types of audio projects. For those of you who are looking to dive into music making, this is the place to start. Here you will find the tools you can use to create your own music and sound creations. There are so many options out there that it can be difficult to identify the best software or app for your needs.

In this chapter, we hope to take some of that guess work out of the equation. We have identified the software and apps that are powerful but easy enough for beginner music makers to get started with. We have used these tools in makerspace programs at the Middletown Free Library and have explored them with our own young maker at home.

Some tools are not specialized pieces of equipment or software but very basic, cheap, and even free items that you probably already have on hand. For many of our programs with young and new music creators, we start out very simply using our bodies, drumsticks and buckets, or other everyday items to begin the learning process. Getting familiar with specialized terms, patterns, and other processes that go into music and sound creation becomes easier when learners can get acquainted with them in a physical way. By creating several entry points into the learning process, you can also address various learning styles, getting everyone not only to the point where they can start creating but also understanding the science behind some of the tools they will be using.