Beats from Scratch

A few years ago I inherited a wonderful class of 7th and 8th graders at public charter school in the San Fernando Valley. At the time I was serving as a IT support for the school but found myself constantly pulled into a technology class run by a old school librarian - bless her heart. Second semester came around and the students had blown through the self-guided curriculum and my help was summoned.

At the time, Scratch programming, a block based coding platform developed by MIT was buzzing and I was curious on how to use it myself. I found a few instructional videos and built it into a easy multi-week curriculum. Of course, the students loved in as we made simple versions of classic arcade games like Asteroids and Super Mario. As the year progressed students began creatively finding new things to do with Scratch, bending the rules to create whatever their hearts desired.

As our last few weeks together approached I decided to give my students a challenge. I shared my passion for music technology by introducing them to the legendary Akai MPC sampling hardware. We talked about the importance of digital sampling in Hop Hop and how the early machines worked. Then, I asked my students if they could make a beat machine with Scratch. In less than two weeks they came up with this, beatSMIF DSM Mk I. It was amazing to watch the students troubleshoot the coding while others played with the design to make it look and act like a real hardware machine.

Since then I have been re-introducing the beat machine to new classes of students. Instead of asking them to create it again, I’ve been challenging students to add something to it. Students have found was to add additional sound banks, create a powering up sequence, make a functional display, and most recently RECORD and PLAYBACK the beats!

In 2019 I was asked to lead a workshop on this beat machine at an event for students grade 6-12. I created this Google website with a full tutorial on the build that students (and adults) could work on independently.

Check out this program here.

How about you? What can you add to the beatSMIF DSM mkII? Build, play, enjoy, and contribute!