Leading Musicians, Colleges and Companies Donate over 6,500 Sampled and Synthesized...

Leading Musicians, Colleges and Companies Donate over 6,500 Sampled and Synthesized Sounds to One Laptop per Child

The Berklee College of Music, Berklee Music Synthesis alumni, the
international Csound community, Open Path Music and Avid Technology
open up their sound libraries to the children of the world
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(Business Wire)--
Several prestigious groups of musicians have donated their sound
libraries to One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit organization
focused on providing educational tools to help children in developing
countries "learn learning." The XO laptop's unique user interface and
applications enable children to create and share music, drawings,
video, personal diaries and other things they make online with family
and friends worldwide.

Leading musicians, colleges and companies making their sound
libraries freely available on the XO laptop are: The Berklee College
of Music in Boston, Berklee Music Synthesis alumni - including
electronic music superstar BT, the international Csound Developer
community, M-Audio and Digidesign (parts of Avid Technology, Inc.),
and the Open Path Music group.

"One Laptop per Child has inspired musicians to donate their sound
collections to the children of the world," said Dr. Richard Boulanger,
professor of music synthesis at the Berklee College of Music and the
organizer of the Berklee collection being donated to OLPC. "By
providing extraordinary access to the resources to play, mix,
transform, imitate and create sounds, sound effects, music and audio
art works, this donation will enable children with XO laptops to learn
about music and sound, and to learn about themselves and their world.
This collection will inspire and promote incredible music-making on
the XO laptop and will invigorate the creative audio work of all
computer musicians."

"We deeply appreciate the generosity of The Berklee College of
Music and its alumni, the Csound Developers, the studio musicians from
Open Path Music and the sound designers at M-Audio who have donated
their valuable sound collections for use on the XO laptop," said
Walter Bender, president of software/content and COO of One Laptop per
Child. "The creation of music and sounds is an important activity on
the XO laptop because it allows children to express themselves and
share something both fun and fundamental with others. Music is a
universal language that everyone - across all borders and languages -
can enjoy and appreciate."

The 8.5+ gigabyte sound collections being donated to OLPC and
available under a Creative Commons Attribution license include the
following:

-- The Berklee College of Music - over 2,400 sound samples in 16
volumes including ethnic instruments (e.g., congas,
didgeridoos, sitars, gongs and kalimbas); orchestral and pop
music instrument sounds; animal sounds; vocal sounds (e.g.,
screams, whistles, mouth pops, singing); percussion noises
(e.g., slams, strikes, alarms, bells and cymbals); and a wide
variety of other imaginative and fantastical sounds produced
by synthesizers. These sounds were created and recorded by
over 250 Berklee students over the past 20 years.

-- Berklee Alumni - over 1,450 samples created by Berklee alumni
who have gone on to established careers in the music, film and
television industries.

-- The Csound Developer Community - over 1,200 sound effects,
loop libraries and instrumental samples from Csounders
worldwide. Csound is a sound design, music synthesis and
signal processing system that provides the engine for music to
run the XO laptop.

-- Open Path Music - over 350 sounds that were recorded by a
group of 15 studio musicians who came together for three days
to specifically create and donate their samples to the One
Laptop per Child project.

-- M-Audio and Digidesign, parts of Avid Technology - A General
MIDI Sample Set that will support the playback of a huge
collection of free musical arrangements - classical, popular,
and children's songs - from the XO web browser and other XO
music Activities.

Sound samples can be found on the OLPC wiki at
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sound_samples.

One Laptop per Child will continue to work with Dr. Boulanger,
Berklee, cSounds.com, Csounders everywhere and other third parties to
make more music and sounds available on the XO laptop.

About One Laptop per Child

One Laptop per Child (OLPC at http://www.laptop.org) is a
non-profit organization created by Nicholas Negroponte and others from
the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture and distribute laptop
computers that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in
the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. These XO
laptops are rugged, open source, and so energy efficient that they can
be powered by a child manually. Mesh networking gives many machines
Internet access from one connection. The pricing goal is $100.

(C) All rights reserved. Avid, Digidesign and M-Audio are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. or its
affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other
trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective
owners.

For One Laptop per Child
Jackie Lustig, 781-487-4664
press@racepointgroup.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008