Making Music With littleBits^™

Below you’ll find a how-to for one of our most popular programs: making music with the littleBits Synth Kit. CreateSpace@MFL is lucky to have an audio engineer (and creator of this program) in our community; however, this guide will help you run the program without needing the expertise of a musician who is familiar with making music using synthesizers.

Supplies Needed

• littleBits Synth Kit: Kids can work in pairs or individually.
• littleBits Mounting Boards: While these are not required, the mounting boards are a nice way to keep your project in place while you are working on it.
• Extra bits: You can use light sensors and LEDs to expand your creations and experiment with adding new elements to trigger sound.

Age Range & Class Size

We’ve run this program with kids as young as 7 years old, but kids that young do better with the assistance of a parent or adult. The ideal age for kids to work independently would be ages 9 and up. Since each Synth Kit only comes with enough bits to build one complete synthesizer, the group size is limited to the number of kits your library owns. For example, we have 4 kits (including the instructor’s kit), so when we run this program we open it to 8 participants, and the kids work in pairs with one pair sharing their kit with the instructor.

Time Frame

This program runs about 90 minutes, giving the kids time to explore sound and share their creations.

What You Do

This program consists of four parts; in the first part children will be using their bodies to generate tones and learning how to mimic the various synth bits. To get started your need these basics:

• Power supply: human body
• Oscillator: using your voice to generate a tone
• Envelope: using your mouth in the shape of an envelope to form sound
• Filter: hand over ears

To prepare for the littleBits portion of the program, you will need to arrange the pieces of the Synth Kit into a chain consisting of a single oscillator, envelope, filter and the speaker.

The littleBits chain, which you can set up on the floor, a table or the mounting boards, should go in the following order:

• Power supply
• Keyboard
• Oscillator
• Envelope
• Filter
• Speaker

Introduction

“Today we will become human synthesizers, and then we will get to build and play with a real synthesizer.” Emphasize that each child is going to begin by using his or her body as a power supply. Their minds and bodies will be the power source for their noise making!

Ask children to think about a unique sound they could make with their mouths. Make some example sounds to get them started, such as a car’s “vroom” sound. Give children a few minutes to play around and practice making sounds. Encourage noises with long vowel sounds.

Part 1

1. Sit in a circle with the kids. Go around the room and ask each one to showcase the mouth sound he or she chose. You may wish to have them name their sounds.

2. Show them the littleBits oscillator and say, “Your voice is like an oscillator.”

3. Demonstrate the various wave forms the kit allows you to choose from. If you feel inclined, draw the waveforms for kids to see.

Part 2

• Have children take a minute or two to make their sound again and practice making the movements of their mouth very slowly and then very fast.

• Show them the littleBits envelope. Say, “The shape of your mouth, with your lips opening and closing in different shapes, is much like the envelope. It controls how the sound is shaped.”

• If time and size of the group allow, give the kids the opportunity to manipulate the littleBits envelope.

• Review Part 1 and Part 2 of the program and draw parallels between the sounds children are making with their bodies and the Synth Kit. You can also talk about which traditional instruments have fast or slow “attacks” and “decays.” For example, a slowly bowed cello has a slow attack and slow decay, meaning the bow is drawn slowly over the strings and pulled away slowly, the resulting sound is slow to fade. A snare drum typically has a fast attack and decay, meaning the drumstick hits the drum and is released quickly, and the sharp resulting sound fades quickly.

Part 3

1. Ask the kids to make their unique noises again, but have them cup their hands over both ears. Have them open and close the cover over their ears in various degrees. Give them a minute to experiment with this. Say, “Now you’ve created a filter. As you move your hands over your ears, you allow your ear to hear certain frequencies (parts of the sound) more, while lessening others.”

2. Have each child each present their noise to the group while the rest of the kids experiment with their hands opening and closing over their ears.

3. Relate this experiment back to the filter on your kit. If your group is small enough, allow each child to experiment with the instructor’s kit.

Part 4

1. Give a general review of what you’ve learned so far, equating the parts of the body with each part of the kit. Have children build their own replica of the instructor’s single oscillator synthesizer. Remember, each Synth Kit only has enough bits to build one complete synthesizer. By this point in the program you should have an idea of the level each child is at, making it an ideal point to split the kids into pairs to work with the kits.

2. Go around and help children create their own unique synthesizer sound. Give your group a few minutes to experiment with tweaking the various knobs, which are called potentiometers. Ask them to settle on a sound, and have each child present his or her sound to the group.

3. Review fast and slow attacks and releases. Then ask children to make a sound with a slow attack and a quick release. Give them a moment to practice, and then have them present to the group. After each child presents his or her sound, ask the group what each noise sounded like.

4. Have the kids swap kits and experiment with each other’s work before presenting their unique sounds once again. Each group should have created a unique sound based on the tweaking and experimenting they did in steps 2 and 3.