Tinkerer's Orchestra! Design Day!
BOOM. BANG. CLINK. CLANK. ~~~~hummmm~~~~~~
Wednesdays at the Tinkering School just got a little more bumpin.’ This week we learned we would be creating our very own, larger-than-life sound makers. We imagined making vibrations of all kinds, inspired by both the familiar instruments we know and love and by the crazy collection of materials in the shop.
Our session's theme is "Tinkerer’s Orchestra" and every week we’ll be building, tinkering, making music, and adding on to our collaborative soundscape. This blog will document the story of our work, and we'll upload even more photos to flickr for you to see the progress we're making.
Every tinkerer had the chance to carefully investigate and experiment with different sound-making materials as we brainstormed for our final design.
Rubber bands can make cool sounds at different pitches when they're snapped!
"Playing" the spokes of an old bicycle wheel.
The beginnings of a one-string base!
Assembling the first draft (prototype) of a giant wooden xylophone. Tinkerers experimented with clanking wooden boards of different lengths and found that the shorter boards made higher sounds! They were also pretty excited to use the power drills.
At the end of our hands-on brainstorming session, we shared what we had learned, captured our ideas on paper, and collected these plans on the Project Board. Next week, we'll have lots of ideas to work with as we start to build the first pieces of our Tinkerer's Orchestra!
Collaborating and creating a design.
Capturing our ideas at the end of an afternoon of tinkering.
Our project board, end of week 2!