M-Vave SMK 25 and Raspberry Pi 3: Making it simple for my daughter

Using Zynthian
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Hi all! First post here.

I’m introducing the world of computing and music to my daughter - and learning myself. I got a M-Vave SMK 25 and a Raspberry Pi 3, and I got them working with Zynthian. Now I want to make something really simple for her to use. My idea is for her just to turn the pi and the smk25 on and start playing. I would also like to:

  • make the keyboard play notes and the pads play drums
  • make it simple for her to change the sounds to two or three combinations of keyboards and pads, like piano and drums, a funny organ and beat box, etc. Ideally without having to touch the Zynthian interface - the pi will be headless

Is this possible somehow, either inside the Zynthian interface on changing the underlying Debian underneath? Thanks so much!

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Hi @synthdad !

Welcome to zynthianland. I hope you enjoy with our companion and chat.

Regarding your question, you could prepare a curated snapshot with subsnapshots for each “sound”, so she simply have to push a button to change the sound.

It’s what i did for my 8 years old daughter :wink:

Regards,

1 Like
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Thanks! Can this be done directly from the SMK or she would need to access somehow the Zynthian interface?

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After config, headless operation is possible, e.g. assigning two of the pads to program change up and program change down.

You would first need a way to access zynthian gui, either with screen and keyboard or over vnc from webconf (with steps from: No Hardware Build - ZynthianWiki )

Assigning program change commands to pads could probably be done by webconf master keyboard functionality (Zynthian UI User Guide - V1/V4 - ZynthianWiki , section 5.2)
It takes midi notes from certain channel and uses them to control the zynth. If you want to only use couple of pads for control, then midi fxses through add midi chain could be used and split spesific notes to the master keyboard channel.

Then you create your desired sounds and save each for SubSnapShots and assign them to program change commands. ZS3 (SubSnapShot) saving in headless setup

Hopefully this could get you started!