Learn how to turn an old, unwanted children’s toy into a completely new and original electronic musical instrument. We’ll cover the basics of electricity and instrument/interface design, and you’ll create a wacky noisemaker you can take home. All are welcome—no experience with electronics or music-making of any kind required.

This workshop was taught as part of undergraduate course Professional Practices in the Contemporary Arts (Art Skills) with a sustainability focus. Thank you to Barbara Adler for making it happen!

Invited guest composer at workshop taught by Sarah Riskind (Director of Choral Activities/Assistant Professor of Music, Eureka College), to help conduct work SUPERLATIVES (vocal version from 2021)

Eureka Sings: Spotlight Workshops for Music Teachers will enrich vocal and choral music educators’ techniques and provide resources, ultimately benefiting K-12 students. Each workshop will empower them to bring new repertoire and methods to their students that will increase inclusion of underrepresented cultures and composers. The workshops are geared towards K-12 and community college educators, music education students, church choral directors, and anyone interested in incorporating diverse repertoire into their teaching and practice. All music educators are welcome.

More info about the workshop series here.

Multi Sensory Media is a virtual workshop about perception, using the five senses as touchpoints for creative inspiration. Over nine weeks and nine projects, we’ll explore the sensorium and make art that you can smell, feel, and taste. We’ll consider how we experience and move within the world, and how sensory discoveries and revelations can be applied to sound and multimedia art-making. Participants will explore different combinations of media and the five senses each week, and are encouraged to bring their own creative practices to the workshop, whatever they may be! Creative folks of all kinds are welcome, whether you have existing practices or are looking to explore and develop new ones.

Nine weeks, all materials included, no experience required.

Art by Jasmine Bailey

A journey through different audio outputs and inputs and how they work! Participants explored different inputs and the sounds they can create (microphone, contact microphone, hydrophone, electromagnetic pickup, and more!) and then learned how to make a contact microphone to take home with them.

No soldering experience required—and intro to basic soldering skills included in the workshop.

Presentation Abstract: The purpose of my presentation is to provide an overview of the benefits of music literacy—reading and writing braille and print music—for students with visual impairments and multiple disabilities. There is a stereotype that students who are blind and visually impaired can learn everything through listening, but in reality all music students with visual impairments can benefit from learning to read and write music alongside their sighted peers. I will share teaching strategies that promote musical literacy from my own work experience and research: for example use of graphic and tactile pre-notation, movement and composition/performance activities that support literacy, and other strategies for teaching music braille and print music to students with visual impairments. TVIs often feel overwhelmed by helping students learn to read and write music, so I will also provide resources that can help TVIs support their students in accessing music curricula. As a TVI who specifically teaches music, I have had to create my own curricula for helping my students access musical notation, and have found ways to make these teaching strategies accessible even for TVIs or families who know nothing about music themselves.

Postponed from April 2020

Trash Cats (Kittie Cooper and Alex Christie) host a workshop for participants to build their own customizable DIY analog synthesizer, no experience required!

This workshop was presented as part of the Southwest Electronic Music Festival at Arizona State University, for which Trash Cats were featured guest artists.

Link to Festival Website

In March 2020, two weeks after the COVID-19 lockdown, Berkeley-based audio laboratory Dogbotic teamed up with Oakland nonprofit Thingamajigs to produce “Synth In Place,” a socially-distant beginner’s workshop on the joys of DIY electronics. Designed with absolute beginners in mind, the nine-week curriculum teaches participants the art of creative electrical engineering, the cultural significance of electronic audio, and how to blend DIY music with students’ pre-existing creative practices. After building a variety of theremins, talkboxes, stepped tone generators, sequencers, and vactrols, students have the opportunity to design, engineer, and fabricate an instrument entirely of their own creation—several of which you’ll see in front of you.

Panelists for the discussion included Kittie Cooper, Maisy Byerly, Mei-Ling Lee, Alex Christie, Sean Hallowell, and Kirk Pearson. This program was streamed live.

See more here: dogbotic.com/museum

Description: In this workshop, we will explore the creative potential in using text to notate music. We will make sounds and words together, and discover means of integrating text scores into your own creative practice and interests. Whether you are an experienced composer/writer/artist, or whether you haven’t done any writing since elementary-school book reports, this workshop is for you! (no experience with music or writing required). Bring a mug of tea or hot chocolate, and come enjoy a peaceful evening (or afternoon, or morning) of sounds, words, and the company of others.

We’ll be looking at works by some of the following composers: Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Alison Knowles, Mieko Shiomi, and more.

Please bring the following materials to the workshop: something you enjoy writing with and on, paper (different colors or textures are encouraged), tape, scissors (optional), markers (optional), a cozy beverage and/or snacks (silly little sandwiches encouraged).

Circuitry and synth building workshop for students ages 9-18. Students built a hex schmitt circuit on a breadboard and improvised with it using photoresistors and light. Co-taught on Zoom with Alex Christie.

Presented alongside Alex Christie

Link to Conference Website

Workshop Description: In this workshop, we will assemble Crackleboxes, which are homemade electronic instruments. You will also learn necessary basic soldering skills and circuit design. Then we’ll use our new instruments to perform a piece! All are welcome—no experience required. Co-taught with Alex Christie.

Based on Cracklebox circuit designed by Nicolas Collins as well as content from Handmade Electronic Music (Nicholas Collins).