Do you remember the cool synthesizer songs of the 1980's? Back when big hair and keyboard-only bands ruled the pop music scene? Did you want to be your own singer-songwriter too? Maybe Falco doing "Rock Me Amadeus"?

Now children worldwide will be able to make their own One Laptop Per Child-based sound synthesizers, using MiniTamTam on the OLPC XO thanks to TamTam4OLPC, a team of designers, musicians and programmers at the Faculté de musique de l’Université de Montréal.

But not just using the sounds that come with miniTamTam (check out the excellent TamTam video). With the synthLab software, the Children's Machine XO will allow would-be musicians to build their own synthesizer from the base sound on up. SynthLab for MiniTamTam has five tools to explore the physics of sound and logic of circuitry:

• a basic worktable
• a bank of modules with sources, processors, controllers
• a bank of presets - examples of circuits that work
• a slider for sound duration and volume
• and save/edit commands for the synth patches

If you'd like to see how the tools work, or just want to hear really odd computer sounds that would make 2001: A Space Odyssey proud, check out the very informative synthLab demonstration:

Now that you're impressed with the technology, check out the video backstory: the making of the synthLab demo photos.