Synthesize Me! Using the legendary Stylophone instrument in a learning disability music project
Many thanks to Dubreq who have donated some of their Stylophone instruments to our project. As part of creating an original piece of music inspired by pioneering electronic musicans Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire we are looking at using some classic synthesizer sounds. Dubreq currently have three very affordable stylophone instruments available.
The original Stylophone was famously used by David Bowie on the recording of the classic song 'Space Oddity'. It is a small instrument and is operated by touching a metal tipped stylus on a small keyboard metal strip. It is very intuitive and makes a small but satisfyingly unique range of sounds. The modernised version of this classic stylophone is called the Stylophone Gen X-1 and has a similar layout but with an added array of inbuilt envelope filters and delay effects, great for playing melodies, bass lines or creating dramatic sound effects. The third instrument in this range is called the Stylophone Beatbox which has a variety of percussion sounds and a loop recording facility
All of these instruments were used by our learning disabled band members in our last session and they found them to be very intuitive. The flat surface of the keyboard mean a glissando effect can be easily achieved by gliding the stylus sideways, this proved particularly popular. Being a small instrument but having the stylus means playing the instrument is not a fiddly task as you might imagine it to be considering the size of the instrument.
All three would make great additions to a music educators kit. They are easy to store, powered by batteries and have minijack/headphone outputs and inputs as well as inbuilt speakers, they can be fine tuned as well. The sound of the original stylophone is timeless in the way that it evokes a retro sci-fi feel and I think young musicans including those with learning disability would enjoy exploring it.
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