Super Duper Music Looper
Sony's Super Duper Music Looper is the fun way to create music. Wake up your child's creative talents by giving them a full recording studio to work with; They'll have a great time recording over their favorite songs or makingup new ones. Everything they need to make music is here: Pick from nine instruments, mix them together and create a complete song in minutes. Kids can record their own vocals, e-mail songs to friends and be as creative as they want. They'll even watch wacky animation as they dance to the music. Best of all, they don't need to know anything about music. All they need is Super Duper Music Looper, a PC, and a little imagination.
Super Duper Music Looper Accessories
 Logitech USB Desktop Microphone
Music Ace Deluxe
Crazy Machines: The Wacky Contraptions Game Win/Mac
Crazy Machines 1.5
Petz: Dogz 5 and Catz 5
Learning Company Kid Pix Deluxe 4 (Version 2)
American Idol Jam Trax
The Titan's Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 3)
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
American Idol Extreme Music Creator
Super Duper Music Looper Reviews
There's a version of ISO Recorder available for Vista. But I find it pretty fun, and it seems like, even for an adult, a good first step toward using Sony's Acid products. I'll try to explain briefly how this can be done with free software in Windows XP SP2. There's a way around it, but it requires some computer savvy. Good luck.
Note: If you're running Vista, you should still be able to create and mount an ISO of the Super Duper Looper installation disk. This is a huge drag. The program is probably too advanced for my daughter, though I'm sure it's usable by some 4 and 5 year olds (it's recommended for ages 6 to 9). You need two pieces of software: (1) an ISO-creation program, and (2) an ISO-mounting program.
I think a program called Virtual Clone Drive (Google it) will work, but I haven't tried it. (The drop-down list in Super Duper Looper's dialog box will only show you the letters of your actual CD or DVD drives; since the ISO file is really a virtual CD drive, you need to manually enter the drive letter). As another reviewer noted, the program expects you to have the CD inserted (the loops the building blocks of the songs are on the CD). I got this to goof around with and to consider letting my 3-year-old daughter play with. Note that when you run Super Duper Looper after installing it, and after creating and mounting the ISO of the installation disk, you will need to manually type in Super Duper Looper's dialog box the drive letter you assigned to the ISO file when you mounted it.
For mounting the ISO in Windows XP, you can get a free program from Microsoft (it's not officially supported but seems to work fine) called the Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for XP. You can get a free ISO-creation program called ISO Recorder from http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/. I don't think it should it seems like it's obviously fair use but if you're worried about that sort of thing, consult a lawyer. This will allow you to create an ISO image i.e., a file on your hard drive of the Super Duper Looper installation disk. Also: I don't know whether Sony would argue that this violates their copyright. Specifically, you have to copy an image (an ISO file) of the installation CD to your hard drive, then "mount" that image so that your computer thinks the CD is in your drive.
Instructions for installing and using the Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel are in the README.TXT file that comes with the program. (I'm a lawyer, but I'm not YOUR lawyer, and this review is not legal advice). You can then run Super Duper Looper and, when it asks where the CD is located, you can point it to your mounted ISO file. You'll need a different ISO-mounting program, though, since the Virtual CD Control Panel mentioned above is for XP only. Go to this URL and search for "virtual CD" and you'll see a link to it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/faq/. So I recommend it, but with reservations.
You can save it wherever you want; next you need to mount it. Make sure you look at the programmer's how-to page at http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/HowTo.htm to see how to use it (when you install ISO Recorder, you won't find a shortcut to it, because it is just a shell extension, as the how-to explains).
It was really easy for him to use & his 6-year-old sister can use it with a little help too. Once he got started on it, he plays it about 1 hour per day. & adds word loops here & there. Most of his songs have a lot of drums & word-phrase looping, but that's how he likes it.
You can see all your music at once & where each instrument sound starts & stops (which can have many of each). You use a paintbrush to paint in that sound on a staff-like group of bars to the right & you repeat this again w/another instrument. We've also copied them over to his PSP (Sony Playstation Portable) and he takes them on-the-road on road trips & shared them with kids while at daycare during Winter Break. He starts off a new song w/drums, guitars, bass, etc. This was a Christmas gift we purchased for our 8-year-old son who loves music. This was well worth the money we spent.
It's really easy for him, as he just picks what type of instrument from a pick list & then scrolls through all the possibilities (many looping sounds from each instrument to pick from). He makes his own songs & saves them to the hard drive. We haven't tried the RECORD feature, as we don't have a microphone on the PC, but he'll probably be singing to that once we buy one. You can change the tempo & key the masterpiece is played in & the volume of each individual instrument playing. This is a great computer game & we've found so many more uses for the created music (like background music for a computerized photo album). He's used the e-mail feature (with some help) to send his music creations to grandparents.
We also save them as.wma files, so windows media player can use them. He was reluctant to try it, as he thought it'd be too hard to use.
We looked at reviews together and chose this software. It was a good move. My daughter uses the Apple program at school and wanted a music creation program to use at home on her notebook. It won't let her become a serious composer, but that was not our goal. However, based on these reviews, I advised we keep it. This is simple to use and she's having a great time with it, making fun music riffs. When it arrived, my wife almost returned it because the package says it is for kids 6 to 9 years old.
Too bad this isn't available for the Mac. My kids love this. I find it annoying that all the projects are saved in the directory with the program itself, but that's somewhat typical of Windows programs.
a huge success. create. My only complaint is that the CD has to be in the drive for. kids to be creative with music and they are so proud of what they. the program to work, you cannot do a complete install. hard for portability purposes on a laptop, other than that it's been. My son just received this product and he loves it, it really allows. This makes it.
|
