Free My1stSynth for you(r) KIDS...

[jjs]

Hi,
this one is just for fun, so you can let your kids also play with a PC-synth wich is fun, just like those plastic keyboards.
Or just play yourself, hahaha!

My1stSynth

my1synth-ready.png (306.81 KiB) Viewed 3161 times

Get it here:
exe http://www.mediafire.com/?wd0hb4w6dy3hfo6
osm http://www.mediafire.com/?1dxxio766ypl73q

or here:
exe http://sourceforge.net/projects/my1synt ... e/download
osm http://sourceforge.net/projects/my1synt ... m/download

Have fun!

(credits for those who deserve mentioned in the program, anyone forgotten...sorry, thanks again)

[trogluddite]

Really like this - great work!

So many of us seem to spend all our time here disappearing up our own a***s to add more, more ,more to every design, and user interface that needs a 50 page manual, and much synth experience, to understand (yes, I am very guilty of this! )
It is really refreshing to see something so simple to use, and presented with fun sounds and appearance. (also, despite being in my 40's, musical animals still makes me giggle like a fool!)

[jjs]

:o Really like this - great work!

So many of us seem to spend all our time here disappearing up our own a***s to add more, more ,more to every design, and user interface that needs a 50 page manual, and much synth experience, to understand (yes, I am very guilty of this! )
It is really refreshing to see something so simple to use, and presented with fun sounds and appearance. (also, despite being in my 40's, musical animals still makes me giggle like a fool!)

Glad that one of the most important and contributing persons like you likes this and has fun with it !
Hahahahaha it makes me laugh too

I hitted 40 too this year, so i thought of something a child easily could play with, and you can even annoy your wife with it too if you like, especially the mosquito, bzzzzzz, bzzzzzzz....

[trogluddite]

annoy your wife with it too if you like

He he - reminds me of the last time my brother's kids came to visit. I had made a simple sampler, like the old Casio ones that had a built in mic (still posted here somewhere, I think) - make a sound, instant play on the keyboard.
We went to find loads of things in the house to sample, pots and pans, pencils on the table edge etc. - but of course their absolute favourite to drive the adults insane was to have a competition making music with their burps and farts! (my sister-in-law provided the baby wipes to clean my mic's afterwards!!).

Anything that teaches that music making, art, etc. is not a special privelege, and makes it fun and easy for kids to use their own imagination and get creative, is cool in my book. And I would rather listen to something ingeneous made with 8-bit 'circuit bent'' children's toys, than an expensive production of 'TV celebrity' clone music any time.
After all, we always say that a musical instrument is 'played', not 'worked'.

[philter5]

have not tested it yet, but the idea is great and the GUI looks flashy = double thumps up

[jjs]

annoy your wife with it too if you like

He he - reminds me of the last time my brother's kids came to visit. I had made a simple sampler, like the old Casio ones that had a built in mic (still posted here somewhere, I think) - make a sound, instant play on the keyboard.

After all, we always say that a musical instrument is 'played', not 'worked'.

Great! have to search for that, for fun!

[MichaelBenjamin]

controversy: i say kids should not be fed such gadgetterie!
also, it should read "my first synth" and not "my synth - first" in a brutally less spastic way. other than that i think the #s might scare the sensible of young children.

[jjs]

controversy: i say kids should not be fed such gadgetterie!
also, it should read "my first synth" and not "my synth - first" in a brutally less spastic way. other than that i think the #s might scare the sensible of young children.

Sorry, i don't get you at all.
Do you have kids? Well i have and she (3 years) loves it.
I think you're missing a sense of humor here.
Just don't put your system volume to load and they won't be scared.

Anyway you don't have to use it, it's for people who just want to have some fun.

By the way, no heart feelings, also critisism is welcome, good ones make you stronger.

[trogluddite]

Great! have to search for that, for fun!

Ha ha, I had forgotten, the thread is called Fun with Burps!
I've always meant to return to that project, to clean it up a bit and make it simpler to use - If you have any funky ideas for it, I'd be interested to know.

controversy: i say kids should not be fed such gadgetterie!

The spoiled brats should get a stick and a piece of string and nothing more!

Of course, it is right that children should learn not to become addicted to the endless cycle of short-term gratification (tricky, when in reality it is adults who seem mostly to have this problem) - of course, they will never become rounded members of society, or have healthy bodies and minds, if their leisure time is all spent shut in a room with only a 'gizmo' of limited features to interact with. Just as with diet, it is a case of striking a balance between what we like, and what is good for us.
But, I believe we should not point our finger at the manifestations of technology - this is a sociological issue, not caused by the products, however limited in scope, but by the immersion in 'propaganda' which vastly oversells their ability to enhance our lives. The crucial factor is that adults provide the context that allows children to form a realistic outlook of the value of things.
There is no intrinsic harm at all in five minutes of fun playing "burp music" - and such 'triviality' can have benefits, especially if kids are with friends or family, forging bonds between them, and relieving the stresses of the 'serious' parts of life, by laughing together. What is important is to teach that the 'gimmick', whether it is a VST plugin, or a cheesy TV show, is only a catalyst of little intrinsic value, and which may have a 'cost' that must be accounted for.
My experience is that the situation is often reversed - most kids seem intuitively to be attracted to toys that offer a rich learning experience, and will engage their imagination to 'enhance' toys that don't offer this. I worry far more about the adults who have had this instinct beaten out of them by the relentless pressure to fit into the 'consumer' pigeon hole, where status is determined only by the manufactured products in their possession.

@jjs - Me and MB seem to quite enjoy these little debates, but no doubt they are not everyone's cup of tea - it's no problem to move some of this stuff to a new thread if you feel it is distracting from your project.

[Jay]

Well i hope none of MY children are reading this thread because the grammar is awful......

Me and MB seem to quite enjoy these little debates

In Scotland, where we speak the Queen’s English, That would be [MB and I seem to quite enjoy these little debates]

aha ha ha

Good to see you all still here and keeping on!

Thanks JSS! will download this and let my grandchildren have a play with it!

I agree with both of you guys in several aspects! Whilst I agree that children are in many ways subjected to way too much technology at times (iPhones, games consoles, internet etc.) it is as Trog says, a balance needs to be applied by the guardians of said child. I grew up in the halcyon days of the home computer emergence and was given a ZX81 as an eight year old and I would sit there for hours and days typing in syntax. (Usually for nothing more than sequence of bleeps or flashing colourful patterns) My parents were happy to leave me at it as they realised i was learning something that would become one of humanities great shapers.

That said, I spent a great deal of my childhood being shown the workings of the countryside, being taught how to cook, taught how to raise and keep animals, how to keep a home, to play musical instruments etc. etc. So a good balance was set out by my parents.

Nowadays life is just so bloody fast, parents have a lot less time to spend with their children than they did in my day and technology has become in some ways a surrogate! Whilst I would sit at the kitchen table and do my homework with a parent, most kids now will sit and do their homework with a computer.

I have brought my two kids up (now young adults) to embrace technology to the fullest and use it to their advantage, They are articulate, learned in nature, fully computer literate, able to run the farm without me, able to run my recording studio without me, able to play several classic instruments, able to cook, they have great school and further education grades and are fit and proper to be fine young parents themselves! They had every gadget going as kids but my wife and I struck the right balance as my parents did.

I do get sick of the media saber rattling over this "computer games make kids psychotic" and "technology is making kids fat" or otherwise unhealthy. It’s not the technology that causes that, it’s pure and simple bad parenting.

Computer science in particular has changed and continues to change the face of the world more thoroughly and more drastically than did any of the great discoveries in theoretical physics or any other scientific front, and whilst we shape it, it shapes us and the way we live our life’s.We do not want our children to be left behind so i beleive they should be made embrace computers and technology but this must be met with good strong parenting alongside healthy and educational activities.

Very Best Regards
Jay

[trogluddite]

Well i hope... ...grammar...

He he, quite correct - but do not belittle yourself, it sounds as if you have much to be proud of, you deserve a capital letter too!

Good to hear from you again, Jay, hope life is treating you well - not so many of the old "debating team" around here these days, as SM slowly follows the ZX81 into obsolescence.

Nowadays life is just so bloody fast, parents have a lot less time

I''m never quite sure if this isn't just a convenient excuse also. Over the course of the previous century or so, the labour movement has secured shorter working hours, paid holidays, parental leave etc. - and the 'single earner household' with one parent at home is also largely a rose-tinted myth, only commonly available to the working classes for a relatively short period of post-WWII prosperity (part of the politician's rhetoric that we are now all middle-class). 'Not enough hours in the day' has most likely been a common complaint at least since the industrial revolution, if not even before that.
For those at the bottom of society, keeping the family's heads above water has always been something of a struggle (in relative terms at least). But it appears to me that many of those who complain about life being "too fast" do not really fit into that category, and have chosen to be in the fast lane in an attempt 'overtake' their peers in the pursuit of 'status'. A question of balance again - no doubt you and your wife could be living in a larger house, and have flashier cars, a bigger TV, the most fashionable clothes etc. had you not chosen to dedicate so much of your energy to raising your children so well.
I also doubt very much that there has ever been a 'golden age' free from juvenile deliquency and poor parenting - and those seeking a scapegoat to point the finger at. No doubt when Zog the caveman invented the wheel, there were those who accused him of corrupting their children.

(all grammatical errors in the above post are intentional - poetic license for rhetorical effect. Honest )

[jjs]

@jjs - Me and MB seem to quite enjoy these little debates, but no doubt they are not everyone's cup of tea - it's no problem to move some of this stuff to a new thread if you feel it is distracting from your project.

No problem at all, I understand the meaning of you both and how you look at it.

Thanks to Jay also for his contribution.

You al have good points.
My believe is also that good parenting must go alongside the exploring that (y)our kids do.
They explore and we will guide them as good as we can.
Just like my parents did with me, i was actually quit free to do what i want and never had any need to do some weird things or smoke certain things.
I was a sportsman because i liked and was free to choose what i wanted(martial arts), as i am still doing these days.

(True, my wife has to hold me sometimes not to be protective with my daughter, but i think most men have that a bit more with a daughter then with a son (to be clear, not saying that people with a son are not protective, they are, i know.)

At least clear is you guys mean the best for (y)our children!

[MichaelBenjamin]

yes, the "controversy" equals "warning: asshat mode" with the option to talk about general relativity later on.

But, I believe we should not point our finger at the manifestations of technology - this is a sociological issue, not caused by the products, however limited in scope, but by the immersion in 'propaganda' which vastly oversells their ability to enhance our lives. The crucial factor is that adults provide the context that allows children to form a realistic outlook of the value of things.

given that, there seems to be a certain obsession with things being "easy" and "simple", while au contraire the observations of the worlds inner workings tend to be complicated and complex. take all apple products for example, which cater to a certain group of people that inherently detest unmasked natural machinery in its primordial state and instead buy a simplified, wrapped in makeup, fashionista barbie doll, that "just gets things done while looking pretty". they really dont care what character it has, therefore it has none to start with. people with an apple product are feinde der maschine, which is connected with being hostile to ones own rationality.
so every apple product and also every copycat of it - if the fingers point at the sociological part of this issue - reveals a deeply fonded lazyness regarding the understanding of abstract things, functions and concepts on the side of the worshipper, who is preaching to the götze, whose insight into the world gives it its supernatural powers. and that principle is utterly retarded, doing it easy and simple, still living with parents, being spoonfed and diaperchanged.
now the best thing about linux is that it represents the "living on your own" mentality without any intrusive branding. your first own appartment may be shitty and lousy but the feeling it carries is just nice.
elitism, hollowism, götzenanbetung, rational lazyness - are social reflections manifested in apple products.
now back to the child regarding the toy synth (or to some degree makeymakey):
maybe the most important thing is to teach not to fear complicated and complex things, functions and concepts but instead being challenged in a non stressful way by it (did not work? re-(lax)-try). while that toy synth may not harm a child in any way, it also doesnt pose much challenge. since the father built it, its also equipped with a cutebonus of 500%.
if it helps not loosing your mind by changing your conceptual diapers for a moment, i agree with it.

[trogluddite]

given that, there seems to be...

Yes, you make your point well - the 'consumer' is encouraged at every level to accept the same neotony of a domesticated animall.

maybe the most important thing is to teach not to fear complicated and complex things, functions and concepts but instead being challenged in a non stressful way by it (did not work? re-(lax)-try). while that toy synth may not harm a child in any way, it also doesnt pose much challenge. since the father built it, its also equipped with a cutebonus of 500%

As it stands, I agree, it is a simple and fun 'toy'. But in terms of 'teaching not to fear', it may still have something to offer - an introduction to using Daddy's 'grown-up computer', and Daddy's self-sufficiency and resourcefulness to have built it himself.
As is is an SM design, there is also much potential for it o be something which does grow along with the child's intellect; adding new features, exposing the inner workings, etc. - even, over the years, to the point of the child becoming the designer and programmer.
I have seen this first hand with my brother's kids (a few years older than jjs' daughter) - sure they found "burp" music fun for a little while, but it also provoked some insightful and penetrating questions when I told them that I made my own 'toys', and that not all good things come shrink-wrapped from the store. It is now a regular feature of their visits that I am constantly pestered for little PhotoShop lessons, 'sound-bending' demonstrations etc.