I hope you had a wonderful, productive, fun, and relaxing summer.

As some of you may know, I have been very busy over the past few years working on Csound with Barry Vercoe on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) $100 Laptop Computer.

http://laptop.org/laptop/

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Home

This incredibly powerful machine, which will be given for free to some of the poorest children in the world is destined to change how students everywhere learn, collaborate, and share.

I am happy to tell you that the core audio software that is running on these machines is Csound5! It ALL runs. And it all SOUNDS amazing.

I know that you are thinking that Csound is probably too difficult for Children to learn and use, but....

Check out Jean Piché's Tam Tam application to get some idea of how we are wrapping Csound into Friendly Games and Activities and thus making Csound easy for young children to use and learn.

miniTamTam - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31L9qaxOrp0 synthLab - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwqt8NMT-zI interviews - http://tamtam4olpc.wordpress.com/

I spent last year building and testing instrument models for the machine. (My students made some amazing musical examples that served as demos for the rollouts and for the diplomats and ambassadors from all the nations involved). Check out the nations list:

http://www.laptop.org/en/vision/progress/maps.shtml

There will be 3 million units delivered to children in these host countries in the fall! (and over 10 million are planned over the next few years!)

This fall, I am collecting and editing samples for a huge archive of free books, art, music, samples, games, etc...) that OLPC will be setting up at each host school (they call this the *school servers*)

M-Audio - through MS Alum and now Software Project Manager - Jason McClinsey - will be donating a General MIDI set

I have donated a collection from The Csound Book (and some other little things I have done in Csound) plus some sounds from around the house.

Berklee College of Music has donated all the Samples from Mike Brigida's Sampling Classes over the past 20 years (here are a few)

Berklee Alumni working in NY, LA, SF, all over the world have donated AMAZING collections of things.

Members of the Csound Community have been making donations too....

ANDddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

I would like to include some samples from YOU in this Archive.

SOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Do you have ANY samples... - sound fx, loops, acoustic traditional instruments, acoustic ethnic/world instruments, animals, environments, drumkits, etc..

... that YOU have RECORDED, SAMPLED, SYNTHESIZED; - they have to be YOUR sounds - not sounds you have purchased or taken from records. ... YOU have to have recorded/created them

... that you would be willing to DONATE to the project. - you would be giving them away (under the Creative Commons Attribution License) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I will make sure your NAME is associated with your donation (on the OLPC website and in the OLPC archive)

IMAGINE 3 MILLION KIDS making music with your guitar samples, your woodflute samples, your slidewistle samples, your wind, rain, traffic, kitchen utensils, explosions, pianos, sitars, tablas, drumloops, etc....

I will edit ALL the samples into the format we need for OLPC. And.... I will make sure YOUR samples are in folders with YOUR name on them in the Archive/DATABASE - and you will have ACCESS TO THIS COOLECTION TOO! (Of COURSE - EVERYONE WILL!!!)

No donation is TOO small.

Just think about some of the samples you have made, and think about what set of these might make a nice collection

crickets & frogs sitars and tabla breaking glass car engines footsteps machine noises brooks and streams raindrops thunder screams and yells breathing and whispering crying laughing jets and planes trains dogs and cats koto marimba vibes bass guitar trumpet accordions

DrumLoops Arpeggios bassloops

OneShots, With Loops, Without Loops, MultiSamples, LoFI, HiFi, Mono, Stereo, Short, Long, - ALL WOULD BE COOL and USEFUL and INCLUDED (I need them NOW - in the next couple of weeks.... so, don't make anything new, just look over what you have already and what from that might be cool to donate and share.)

(FORMAT - .aif or .wav ANY sample rate - MONO or STEREO)

Remember that these samples are going ALL over the world and WORLD INSTRUMENTS would be most especially appreciated. (a few notes on each would also be FINE - we don't need the Vienna Library here at ALL - We don't need extensive Multi's They would be cool - but... ANYTHING and EVERYTHING is GREAT.)

TO SEND THEM TO ME: - zip whatever samples you would like to DONATE email me a link to the archive you have posted with either: MEGAUPLOAD - http://www.megaupload.com/ or YouSENDIT - http://www.yousendit.com/ or SendSpace - http://www.sendspace.com/ or your own ftp site.

I look forward to hearing from you and sharing your sounds with some of the poorest and most deserving children in the world.

This is a major educational and peace initiative. I hope that you will become part of the movement by donating some of your samples.

Wishing you all the very best.

Dr. Richard Boulanger