We have done many workshops on our projects and working methods in the past.
For children , art-, music- and architecture students and others.
We would like to exchange our experience it with the future generations.
Our workshops are mostly about how to make instruments out of objects, these objects can be obsolete electronics, old vinyl records or a building.

In our kids workshops staalplaat soundsystem will show participating kids that fancy japanese devises or expensive instruments are not at all needed to make great music-instead they will demonstrate that all you really need can easily be found in everyones own kitchen or cellar, if combined with a little bit of research and some playful modification.

Creating what we call the “Philharmechanic Cobra Youth Orchestra” with members of staalplaat soundsystem kids work together in small groups and help each other with ideas.
The end of the workshop results in a joint performance on stage of the Philharmechanic Youth Orchestra.
Guided by a conducted  variation of John Zorn’s Cobra concept plus a simple electronic dimmer-based system, that the kid’s can use to control their instruments.
In the kids workshops staalplaat soundsystem show participating kids that fancy japanese devices or expensive instruments are not needed to make great music.
Instead they will demonstrate that  combined with a little bit of research and some playful modification all you really need can easily be found in everyones kitchen or cellar.
During our performances and installations, usually featuring odd machine orchestras constructed from a plethora of found objects, we noticed early on that children were fascinated by our way of playfully misusing everyday household utilities. On the invitation of Avanto festival in helsinki we consequently developed our first instrument building workshop for children in the year 2005 and have been refining the concept and approach ever since. At the core of the workshop is the idea of avoiding the “copy” or “rebuild” of that which already exists.
Instead embarking with the children on a “research & development quest” for new sound sources and noise-making devices; quite similar to our regular working methods: play experiment, test, trial and error.

We just learned that what we do with the kids is called “Tinkering”
Tinkering is what happens when you try something you don’t quite know how to do, guided by whim, imagination, and curiosity. When you tinker,
there are no instructions—but there are also no failures, no right or wrong ways of doing things. It’s about figuring out how things work and reworking them.Contraptions, machines, wildly mismatched objects working in harmony—this is the stuff of tinkering.
Tinkering is, at its most basic, a process that marries play and inquiry.

Our present setup is shown here, the children can control the volume(voltage) of their own instruments during the live show by a dimmer and or.
make rhythm patters with a small sequencer that we specially build for this workshop.Al the sequencers are synced by the master box.

Philharmechanic Cobra Youth Orchestra slideshow

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