Yesterday I found out about a 19th century instrument, a kind of floor accordion called the basse aux pieds (foot bass). So I made a little digital one.
More about the basse aux pieds, the real one, on youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxcqYlKay78. “It’s a truly Belgian instrument.”
A glitchy MIDI thingy in a bottle. Source code on github: https://gist.github.com/moonmilk/d72f815c7c233b4783e7
Turning the click-clack of an old wind up motor into MIDI time code to control the playback of a recording. (I’ll try it on with a video next!)
(Inside the box, the wind up motor has a flapping arm that interrupts a light beam. Each clack of the motor generates a MIDI SPP command which tells the computer how far / fast to move through the recording.)
That harpsichord bit at the beginning kind of sounds like Dead Can Dance, no?
An IR decoder plugged into an Arduino intercepts codes transmitted by remote controls. Simple software uses the manufacturer code to choose a MIDI channel, and the button code to choose a note. It plays a single percussive note for remote codes it can’t understand, like the Bose.
That synthesizer is 25 years old, and the NAD remote control probably almost the same.
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