Soundbeam
Posted by David French on May 4, 2008
I finally tried the SOUNDBEAM!
Drake Music Scotland aim “…..to equip our nation with the skills and resources to support our disabled community in realising the same musical aspirations as their non-disabled peers”.
The exciting thing is that Drake Music Scotland visited my school last week! The workshops made use of piezo switches and ‘Soundbeam’ to control sounds from the computer. One student was completely transfixed as she discovered that her hand and arm movements produced lovely harp arpeggios. Another student joined in with a melody ‘playing’ the cor anglais. Others used the switches to add pedal notes from the brass and a variety of percussion sounds.
‘Soundbeam’ has been around for quite some time. I remember seeing the EMS video way back in 1992, as part of a study course at Reading University. At that time we visited a special school where the students produced MIDI sounds with piezo switches and sang instrumental sounds using a MIDI microphone.
April 2008, the equipment is very much the same. But the sampled instrumental sounds are a great improvement on the General Midi sounds available back in 1992.
More details about SOUNDBEAM can be found at Drake Music Scotland. The link can be found on LISTEN 1 near the bottom of the page.
