Tag Archives: software

Applications, Ideas

Easy Keyboard Looper

Working on the 10-minute play festival that is happening at Civic Theatre of Greater Lafayette this Friday and Saturday (7pm door, 7:30 show, pay what you can [regular tickets are 18. {this is less}]), it occurred to me that the sound software in use is not very friendly or fun.

Simple Keyboard Sampler UI

You also need gate and loop options per key:

Simple Keyboard Sampler UI

I need to find a language that I could easily write this in. Maybe processing.org?  HTML5?

The goals are:

  • Sample Sounds
  • Simple UI
    • Press key, assign sound
    • Per key options
      • Gate
      • Loop
  • Multiple sounds at once
  • Platform independent

Any thoughts, let me know.

Applications

Scratch: A Taste of the FLOSS Programming World

Scratch-MIT-Logo

I recently had the pleasure of playing around with Scratch while building a new universal image for our labs. Scratch is a graphical, drag-and-drop programming language aimed at young people and beginning programmers. The intuitive interface makes programming a snap. Because of this, we have made sure to install it in all of our computer labs.

Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.

Compared to ALICE, one can be up and programming within a matter of seconds.

Some interesting features:

  • Drag and drop interface
  • Shape and colored coded elements
  • Built in, simple graphics editor to create new sprites easily
  • Online community built upon sharing the program and code with other users around the world

I like that MIT has developed a social community focusing on various aspects of the greater FLOSS world to encourage Scratch programmers to share, discuss, and build upon the knowledge and efforts of others. This is definitely a must have for any child’s computer.

Scratch: overview from andresmh on Vimeo.