What’s the best way to introduce kids to music technology?

Technology is fantastic for kids who want to make music. Unlike when you take up a ‘real’ instrument, you can usually create something that sounds half-decent pretty quickly.

Mobile apps are a great place to start. Many of these have been designed so that pretty much anyone can use them with little or no previous experience, and their touch interfaces are great for kids. What’s more, assuming you’ve got an iPad or iPhone to hand, the cost outlay is minimal. Allihoopa’s Figure (originally released by Propellerhead) has always been a favourite of ours, and can be downloaded for free. And then there are the Smart Instruments in GarageBand, which can be set up so that it’s almost impossible to create something that sounds wrong.

On the hardware side, the tactile and durable Skoog could be an option, particularly for very young children, and we recently witnessed the announcement of the Playtime Engineering BlipBlox, a synth that’s designed specifically with kids in mind. It might look like a toy, with its large colourful controls, but early reports suggest that it could actually have potential as a sound design tool. On the quirkier side, Nintendo’s new Labo kit comes with a playable cardboard piano that you can build.

It’s also worth noting that Roland’s GO:KEYS keyboard is now compatible with ScratchX, the free educational programming language used in education. Thanks to a new extension, its sounds can now be used in ScratchX projects, and it can be used as a controller for them, too.

Finally – and sticking with the slightly educational theme – we’d heartily recommend Google’s Chrome Music Lab (https://musiclab. chromeexperiments.com/ Experiments). This interactive online resource teaches kids how music works, covering the likes of rhythm, chords, harmony, oscillators, strings and sound waves, and is a whole lot of fun, too.