Comment by bigiain
19 hours ago
Reminded me of Teenage Engineering's Pocket Operators:
https://teenage.engineering/store/pocket-operators
I have a few of those, and heaps of my friends gat sucked deeply into playing with them at the expense of whatever they actually came over for. "Nah, I'm not hungry. You should all eat without me, I'll just finish tweaking this groove."
They're aimed (as the company name hints) as a little older than 3 year olds.
One hint for the OP, it's so cool how you can plug those toys into each other in a chain, and have them all sync - so the percussion, base, and melody can all be programmed on threee different POs, and automatically play together.
What would you say is the best one to start with, say for a young middle schooler? Maybe best 3, in order?
I don't think it matters all that much. Any specific opinions are going to be more a natter of personal taste.
Get one aimed at rhythm/percussion, one that has some bass/lowend sounds, and something to make melodies.
I have a PO12, PO14, and PO16. If I was going to buy another one it'd be a toss up between the PO33 and the PO35. If I were starting from scratch I think I'd still get the PO14, I might get a PO24 or PO32 instead of the PO12, and I might get a PO28 instead of the 16. Or if said young middle schooler has access to sounds they can sample easily enough (like, say, Garageband on an iPad_ maybe jump straight to one of the sampling ones (PO33 or 35) for the lead/melody sounds.