I love making things, basically. And here are a few of my projects which are music and physical-computing related. They were all made with minimal tools, mostly using cheap materials.
Ive been making miniature analog synthesisers for christmas presents, they sound pretty mental and are pocket-sized for covert noise-making activities. I wanted them to be like the harmonica is for the blues/folk musician. They are powered by 9v battery, and I intend to make more and sell them for around 40 or so, If you are interested in obtaining one send me an email. The picture is of the circuit, and the finnished versions are coated in hot-melt glue and painted to resemble an lump of alien brains, they light up too when the filter is overdriven.
They have three ultra-wide-range oscillators (infra-to-ultra-sonic), and a resonant bandpass filter. All of the controls are light-sensors to make them fun and versatile to play. They connect to an amplifier or PA by guitar-jack, and there is no inbuilt speaker because such small speakers sound pants. |
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So far this is the most successful interface design which I have built. The LooM feels like a full instrument to play, and also has several possible playing techniques. The design was inspired by traditional Irish Harps, the major changes being that the harp's strings are not plucked, but pulled outward and bent to effect changes in sounds produced by computer. Other parameters are extracted from the height/proximity of the left hand on the curved frame, and also for the right hand there are four flute-style finger-holes, each with a light-sensor at the bottom, a pressure sensor for the thumb, and a row of six push-buttons.
The instrument has a steel skeleton, hand-wired electronics and circuitboard, and was originally intended to have a fiberglass coating. This did not work out, so I kept it minimal and made an aluminium palm-plate. |
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Each string (nylon climbing rope) is anchored to the post of a mixing-desk slider, which is drawn back by a spring. So as I pull on the string I am changing the value of the slider to represent the amount of force. The spring keeps the string taught and returns the slider to zero when no force is exerted on the string. |
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There are a total of 13 variable outputs including the strings and force/light-sensors, and six buttons. This all comes out over USB to supercollider, to be dealt with by my Harp class. |
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This is a USB HID controller which I started building during a visit to steim. The idea was to use very subtle movements of the fingers and palm, for interfacing with SuperCollider synthesis patches.
The control surface has a point for each finger with a force-sensor, and a piezo transducer. There is also a light-sensor which effectively measures the distance of my palm above the surface of the controller. |
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I made this sensor-suit for a collaboration with a dancer/choreographer, It is essentially a hacked wireless games-controller with tilt-switches and bend-sensors at the elbows/knees, and more tilt-switches inside the encoder/transmitter, which I enclosed in a vacuum-formed plastic case.
Games controllers are ideal for this kind of thing, as they were built for gaming, so they are very responsive and
built to withstand good oldfashioned pad-throwing! The data output is usually limited to 8-bit for the
analog elements, and they can be input straight into eg. PureData with the HID object. |
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The controller which I hacked for this project is the firestorm, essentially all that is required is to replace the pots and switches with your own sensors, the innards of these devices are usually modularised into seperate boards for factory assembly so it's pretty easy to isolate the different sections.
This is a simple sensor-interface, basically the Create USB Interface -in a box! It has ten sensor inputs (I used jack-plugs, but it is better to use XLR or DIN plugs to avoid shorting everything out when you plug in a sensor) and the 0-5v sensor inputs are converted to 10-bit elements and transmitted via the USB/HID protocol to pd/sc/max/etc.
There are quite a few project pages of the interface kind on the net, for example; lego mindstorm-related systems, |
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the AID interface (their site disappeared, where did it go?) and the Mamalala interface, and they are very cheap (its all about the free samples really) and fun to make.
This is another gamesController-hack, this time sewn onto a golf-glove. The switch inputs on the pad were replaced with tilt-switches, one on each finger and two on the back of the hand. The analog input was replaced with a Light-dependent-resistor and some simple push-button switches were added to the ends of the fingers.
I used this for a while with sc for instanciating different synths. However it was very difficult to control all of the tilt-switches at once, and I was literally tied to the computer by the USB cable. |
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This is based on the electronic peasant reverb, but with a full sized slinky spring and a piezo contact-microphone. The reverb is mounted on a frame made from steel plates and some kind of wood(???) and is approx 2.5-by-1 metres. The sound is VERY bass-heavy and is best suited to harmonically simple sounds, very rich inputs produce a lot of fairly bland distortion, and as it's bolted to the same table which has my speakers on the feedback is pretty uncontrollable once it begins!
I have been driving the reverb with just the headphone out on my mixer, but I think generally a dedicated 5-watt amp would be better suited to this kind of thing. |
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I think that a lot of technology is surrounded in myths that it is hard or expensive to make things yourself, or that if you do so they will not be very good or of low quality. This is not true, if you can make a tasty pizza you can make your own software/hardware/musical instruments or whatever else, if you want to enough.
This guitar took around six months to make and has a swamp-ash body, maple neck and ebony fingerboard. Hopefully some day I will get around to making a pickup for it :) |
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Essentially all that was needed was to take measurments from my favorite types of guitar, and do a little reading on scale-lengths and the truss-rod etc, and then find a good instrument wood-supplier. The tools needed for this kind of thing are all pretty basic, and can be borrowed or hired fairly cheaply.