Many musicians will be familiar with the metronome, a pendulum charged with generating a rhythmic tick to keep one’s performance in regular time. With PendulumSynth, [mrezanvari] takes the same basic pendulum but uses it in an altogether different musical way.
The build relies on a 10-inch plastic ball to serve as the weighted end of the pendulum, stuffed with a STM32F411CE BlackPill board, a BNO085 IMU, and an nRF radio module for sending out data for external processing. The pendulum’s motion is turned into MIDI data or CV for output to musical hardware which handles actually generating the output sounds.
The system operates in a variety of modes. Gravity mode outputs continuous MIDI data and CV relative to the continuous motion of the pendulum, while DIV3 mode tracks the pendulum’s motion and outputs 3 regular trigger points that correspond as such.
The combination of the intuitive physical nature of the pendulum and its sheer large size makes for an enticing musical exhibit. We’ve seen some other great musical installation pieces before, too. Video after the break.
Pendulum Music Steve Reich 1968
I’ve often wondered what kind of pitch control like a theremin could be derived from all of those 6 DF sensors in our phones. 3 ways or more of expression on a single note!
I want to play music on an instrument rather than be a cog in some DAW to make music.