digital audio hacks

742 Articles

Hey Man, SSH To My Guitar And Setup The Multitouch

January 20, 2010 by 37 Comments

The Misa Digital Guitar is a digital music controller like we haven’t seen before. The body, machined out of ABS, looks like a guitar. The player puts theirs hands in the same places you would on a guitar but the lack of strings make it something different.

The left had manipulates inputs in the form of 144 sensors, six in each of the twenty-four fret positions. The right hand doesn’t strum, but uses a multitouch screen to control the inputs. The UI looks solid, something you’ll have to see for yourself after the break. Tieing this all together is an AMD Geode processor running Gentoo Linux. That means this is open source and begging you to make it do your bidding.

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Multichannel Music Generation For Arduino

January 18, 2010 by 12 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liRF4alsvaI]

[Drew] wrote a library for playing multichannel music on an Arduino. The project connects multiple piezo buzzers to the popular prototyping platform and handles the dirty work involved in modulating multiple buzzers at the same time. The video above starts with an explanation for the first three minutes but if you’re impatient you can jump directly to the music demonstration. The results are magnificent. We’re going to check out the code and see what we can make happen just as soon as we can round-up multiple piezos.

ProtoDeck – MIDIBOX Based Controller

January 14, 2010 by 6 Comments

[Julien] let us know about his ProtoDeck. A MIDIBOX based controller for Ableton Live using a Big Max for live patch interface.

One thing that we have seen is less and less hacks for are MIDIbox projects. It is no wonder, considering now a days we have touch screen and multiple other interfaces and sound creation tools – MIDI almost seems like a dying art.

The ProtoDeck uses 87 pots, 90 buttons, and 81 RGB LEDs all controlled by 2 PIC 18F4620s. [Julien] says his main goals where to have lots of color and buttons. We think he succeeded.

Arduinome With Many Pots

January 12, 2010 by 10 Comments

[Aggaz] added 16 potentiometers to his Arduinome.The Arduinome is a monome clone based around the Arduino as a microprocessor. We seen some Arduinome builds in the past but [Aggaz’s] work augments the physical interface.

Potentiometers used in circuit bending allow for manipulation of the sounds coming out of the circuits. In this case the pots are connected to the microcontroller instead of the sound generation circuitry which means you can do whatever you want with them depending on how creative you are with the code. So far he’s just starting to get the new set of interfaces to play nicely over the serial connection. This could end up being quite popular as it only requires the addition of a multiplexer IC, the potentiometers, and the knobs.

FPGA Keyboard Synthesizer

January 1, 2010 by 3 Comments

This synthesizer relies solely on an FPGA for key detection and sound synthesis. [Chris] and [Joe] built it for their final project at Cornell. The hardware implementation includes velocity sensing for the keys. While at rest, each key contacts a strip of copper foil. A matching strip of foil contacts the key when it is depressed. The velocity data is extrapolated by detecting when a key leaves the rest state and arrives at the depressed state. Sound synthesis is handled in hardware using the Karplus-Strong string synthesis method.  If you want to hear what it sounds like, they’ve posted a video (MP4) that shows off the creation. It sounds like an electric piano to us, so mission accomplished.

RFID Meets Open Sound Control

December 30, 2009 by 6 Comments

Have you been working on a MIDI controller that uses RFID to identify and control different instruments? No? Neither have we but now we’re going to have to look into it. That’s because [Martin.K] has done a lot of the work for us. His nfOSC package links an RFID reader to the Open Sound Control library.

In the video after the break we see [Martin] placing RFID tags onto a Touchatag reader. With each addition, his software triggers a tag add event that OSC picks up and translates to a midi event; in this case it adds a new instrument to the mix. Can this be used to relieve musicians from staring at computer screens during performances? What if there was a small shelf in front of you? As you happily play your electric Didgeridoo, small items with RFID tags on them can be added or removed from that shelf to change the samples that are triggered when toiling away on that sonic weapon. This should be fun!

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