New Project November: Musical Floor Mat w Makey Makey Sampler

November 03, 2021

Each week in November we will be featuring new projects to try with your Makey Makey invention kit! We'd love to feature your work on our blog and will be sending swag and prizes to community members who share great ideas!

We saw this amazing musical floor mat on Twitter yesterday and wanted to share it as part of #NewProjectNov !

Eloíse Cantón and Fran Torres made this amazing Makey Makey musical floor mat to play with their own software Antropoloops. Check it out! It is so cool!

Regalando flow y estilo ...
Eloísa Cantón y @franatorres mostraron al alumnado de #sanjomixband2021 las posibilidades del suelo musical con @makeymakey y play.antropoloops... loops hechos por el alumnado sobre La Niña de fuego de Caracol... @europe_creative @EUCreativa_ES pic.twitter.com/MJbVl40Zc7
— talleresantropoloops (@antropoloopsEDU) November 2, 2021

"Giving flow and style ... Eloísa Cantón and @franatorres they showed the students of #sanjomixband2021 the possibilities of the musical floor with @makeymakey and play.antropoloops ... loops made by the students about La Niña de fuego de Caracol ...@europe_creative @EUCreativa_ES."

This is an excellent idea for New Project November!

This full video shows more projects from these amazing makers and how they made their floor mat!

Build a Musical Floor Mat

We wanted to share how to make a similar floor mat with recyclables, Makey Makey, and our Get Up + Go Booster Kit materials! Let's go!

Gather supplies. You will need the conductive tape and extra long wires from our Get Up + Go Booster kit, aluminum foil, and mat. We used styrofoam, but you could use a large sheet of cardboard or a yoga mat!

Lay out foil on your floor mat. These will be your touchpads, so place them apart so there is enough room to play!

Use conductive tape to extend the conductive trace out to the edge of your floor mat. This is where you will clip your alligator clip. You might want to fold the edge of the tape so you have a nice spot where you can clip your alligator clip.

Repeat adding the conductive tape for each conductive touchpad. Make sure that the conductive traces do not touch one another! Otherwise multiple sounds (or notes) will play.

Use duct tape to keep the touchpads in place. You might also want to duct tape over the conductive tape so you don't accidentally step on it and set off the sound sample!

Plug an alligator clip from each touchpad to a key press on the Makey Makey. Head to our Sampler to start playing music with your feet.

Makey Makey Music Sampler

We know that kids (and adults!) love our piano and bongo app. So we wanted to make a sampler to get more kids interested in sound engineering and using digital audio workstations like Garageband and Ableton.

You can jam out with preloaded samples, but when you are ready to make your own music, here are a few tips and tricks to get you started.

You've crafted a floor pad, and if you plug to these key presses, you can plug and play music with your feet.

Note: For the Sampler, you need to use the arrow key inputs and WASD inputs.

You can add your own sounds by playing instruments and recording it into our Sampler, or you can search for music files by googling wav files to upload.

Recording Samples

Click on the microphone to record. Press and hold to record. (You have a limit of five seconds)

Press to test your sample, and click on the sound wave to trim.

Name your sample and save it to the library. (It will only be stored for this session, so if you like all your recordings and want to use them again. Make sure to export your sample pack once you have all your samples recorded and placed on the sampler. (Video tutorial)

Place all your recordings on the sampler where you want each Makey Makey input to play.

Uploading Samples

Look for a wav file that is usable with a creative commons license, or available for free reuse. (In other words, make sure you have the right to use the file!)

"Free Sound" has a good bank of guitar chords and other musical instruments you can download.

To upload to the Sampler, click on the sound library and click the + sign to upload a wav file.