Teenage mix-master

Everyone who knows China Barnes knows she loves to draw. Music hasn't really been her thing; the only instrument she plays is the recorder that she was required to learn in school, but she sketches and doodles voraciously.

So when the Elgin 13-year-old won a songwriting competition recently, even her mother was surprised.

China composed a musical anthem that took top honors locally and regionally in the sixth annual Club Tech Digital Arts Festivals sponsored by Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

An eighth-grader at Larsen Middle School in Elgin, China learned how to mix electronic music tracks and loops, blending instruments, drumbeats and sound effects, after school at BGCA's Club Larsen site. The club's technology director, Jim Chambers, taught her to use Acid 4.0 music-making software on his laptop.

More Coverage Audio Hear China's anthem

"I thought it would interest me because my family is really artistic in a musical way," China said. "I thought it would just be really fun."

Musical talent courses through both sides of the family, said her mom, Karen Barnes, but it hadn't shown up in China until now.

"She's extremely talented as an artist in general," Karen Barnes said, "but she's never done music. I was very surprised."

The Digital Arts Festivals celebrate club members' creativity in movie making, photo illustration, graphic design, music production and Web site design.

For the music contest, participants were asked to create a piece that would inspire people, China said. Lyrics were optional, and China opted out. She experimented, combining orchestral and techno sounds, among others, "because you never see those together," she said.

Her winning piece "starts with a heartbeat sound, so it's all, like, creepy in the beginning," China said. "It changes as it goes along. It ends abruptly because I couldn't really think of anything else."

The song does have a mystical quality, said Chambers, and it fits the contest theme, "Our Changing World."

"Her song was really neat," he said. "China has a natural ability. She 's a naturally artistic girl, and she really took to the creative process well."

She gets a lot of practice with her facility for art. China like to keep her eyes open at home for objects no one else wants that she can use for her current project, a fairy house.

"Like things lying in the bottom of a drawer," she said. She draws fairies and cuts them out, placing them in the house she's building for them.

"Buttons can be feet," China said. "Empty spools of thread can be tables."

She admits to doodling in school "when I should be listening to the teacher. I'm one of those kids. I've got drawings all over my planner. I kind of grew up drawing."

When she was in sixth grade, China said, her first-grade teacher teasingly asked if she was still drawing during class. She even has original art on her bedroom ceiling, thanks to the benefits of a high bunk bed.

She wants to be an artist or a designer some day, though her favorite subject in school is math "because I'm really good at it. I also like science because I like the chemistry part, and I think it would really help me come up with my own colors for paint," she said.

"Sometimes they don't sell the color you're really looking for."

China won an iPod Shuffle in the Club Larsen contest, which she can use for her favorite kinds of music -- the Beatles, Fergie and country music, but mostly punk rock, she said. When her song was judged best in BGCA's 13-state Midwest Region, she won a $75 Best Buy gift card but hasn't decided how to spend it yet.

She and her mother also got invitations to the Elgin clubs' annual Distinguished Citizens Dinner and dance at the end of this month.

The composition failed to win national honors, but China remains upbeat.

"OK, I didn't win that one, but I won the regional one," she said, "and I was pretty proud about that."