Today a single key, tomorrow an octave?
instrument-a-day 17: cuckoo organ test
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Category Archives: sound sculpture
instrument-a-day 16: singing flower
Spinning flower sings Mozart!
A hastily-constructed Max patch reads a midi file and turns it into rotation speeds for the motorized flower. Based on the wooden synthesizer and an idea by John Glover.
You can actually see the motor seize up when it tries to hit the high note the second time.
instrument-a-day 15: the very large doorbell
A very large doorbell, made out of stuff lying around the studio.
instrument-a-day 14: timbermatic
A labor-saving device for percussionists who have to play Michael Gordon’s Timber
instrument-a-day 13: friday the 13th
A horrible, horrible version of Thelonious Monk’s Friday the 13th played on wooden synthesizer.
(This is a cheat – I didn’t make the synthesizer today. Actually, I recorded the song a few days ago too.)
instrument-a-day 12: reflection tonewheel
Light goes past the waving cat and bounces off the shiny spinning wheel to the sensor. I cut holes in the wheel to approximate a major scale in just intonation.
It works better with light passing through the holes, but the reflection is more fun.
instrument-a-day 11: cacophony organ
Inspired by yesterday’s LED candle with a hidden song, I set up an arduino to transmit 16 different notes on 16 LEDs simultaneously. (The notes are laid out like the bass keys of an accordion, though you can’t really tell.)
The optical receiver hears all the notes at once, unless you cover some of them up.
Bonus: the flickering LEDs do crazy things to a cell phone camera.
The underlying idea and the arduino code (available here) are nearly identical to the Jeltone from a few years ago, just transmitting the sound through light instead of skin conduction.
instrument-a-day 10: candle with a secret!
I plugged a little light sensor into an amplifier to hear invisible light modulation. One of my LED candles had a surprise.
instrument-a-day 9: stepper arpeggiator
Tell the motion planner to move the motors through distances that are related by just intonation ratios, and then the motors’ magnetic interferences should blend in a harmonious way. In theory.
instrument-a-day 8: tiny pendulum music
a tiny homage to Steve Reich, using a tiny pair of headphones as a microphone plugged into a tiny amplifier.
Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music (1966): vimeo.com/65735964