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William,
        A number of museums have done this kind of thing over
the last 15 years or so... one of the biggest problems is that
the technology keeps changing and becomes difficult to repair
or replace.
        Science World did a music exhibit quite a while back with
music rooms... the Experience Music Project in Seattle has
a number of them that they custom developed, and when I was
with Pacific Science Center we did a music exhibit.  The NY
Hall of Science also had an exhibit called Sound Sensations
which had one exhibit station where you could record your voice
and watch the wave patterns.
        At PSC we had electronic drums, keyboards and other instruments.
Kids are pretty hard on them.  We found that keys would break
or stop working on the keyboards and depending on how they
were constructed, you couldn't change out just one key, also
within 2 years all of the models had changed and no longer
fit in the cabinets we designed.
        So, I would recommend buying lots of back-ups of any
technology piece you use and talk with the repair folks at
the music stores to find out which instruments to avoid and
which they find reliable and repairable.
        Interestingly we had far fewer problems with analog
instruments since the technology on them has been pretty
consistent for the last 50- 100 years and parts are always
available.

Dave Taylor

> From: William <[log in to unmask]>
> Organization: Catawba Science Center
> Reply-To: Informal Science Education Network
> Subject: Sound Exhibits
>
> Hello everyone!
> One of our upcoming projects is creating a sound booth area where people
> can experiment with sounds.  Specifically, we wanted to create an area
> where people could either utilize a keyboard or record their voice.  Then
> play with the speed of those sounds and maybe even alter the wave forms.
> As such, I am looking for what people consider the most successful
> exhibits in this vein.
> More specific questions are:
> Does anyone know of software packages that do this in a user friendly way,
> or that can be modified with overlays to do this?  any items I should
> avoid?
> Recommendations for keyboards to use in conjunction with this?
>
> Thank you in advance for your ideas!
>
> William Katzman                    "
> Director of Exhibits               "
> Catawba Science Center

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