Sculpting Clay With Sound

April 23, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

A group of students at the University of Dundee have created this interesting prototype called Sound Sculpted. The goal was to sculpt clay using sound files drive the sculpting arms. Ideally, you would end up with pieces of art that were unique to each piece of music. As you can see in the video (after the break), they did a pretty good job of building this thing and getting the arms to respond to the music. It is almost hypnotizing to watch.

We can’t help but notice that there is a bit of a design issue. Since the 4 arms are fixed vertically, and the clay spins on the same axis they are able to move on, your variation will be very limited. We think this doesn’t detract from the project, but does offer a large area for improvement.

How would you change the sculpting arms or their motion to make each piece more unique?

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Steam Fife

April 18, 2012 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

This auto-flute does it with steam. Well, electricity gets its piece of the action too as the tone holes are opened and closed using a set of solenoids.

We’re at a loss on how the sound is actually produced. We would think that a penny whistle has been used here, except if that were the case the solenoid nearest the kettle would have no use. Then again, after watching the demo after the break we’re not sure that it does have much of an effect. It may be meant to stop the sound but it doesn’t really work all that well.

At any rate we’d love to see some spin-off hacks. Assuming the plastic can stand up to the steam heat this would be a perfect robot controller for recorder controlled snake. You can get a recorder for a buck at the right dollar store, and solenoids can be made out of simple materials. If you know of a way to produce the sound yourself, all it takes are a few careful calculations to place the tone holes.

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Chess Board Step Sequencer

April 18, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

[tinkartank] wrote in to tell us about the chess board step sequencer he built. It’s a great piece of work that combines the wonderful classical erudition a set of chess pieces confers with modern technological musical equipment such as a monome.

The build began by routing small holes underneath each square and fitting very small and fragile reed switches. Sixty four of these switches are wired into rows and columns then attached to the digital inputs of an Arduino Mega. To close these reed switches, magnets are implanted into the base of each chess piece so whenever a piece is on the board is moved a circuit closes.

On the control side of things, [tinkartank] built a very nice control panel to change the key being played*, the tempo, an ‘arpeggio dial,’ number of steps, and if there is a whole or half step in between notes. With this control panel, [tinkartank] can play just about any scale.

How does it sound? Well, the Arduino Mega outputs MIDI so realistically it can sound like anything imaginable. From the video demo (available after the break), we really like the interface and a reed switch array chess board is slowly climbing up our ‘to build’ list, if only for all the cool stuff you can do with one.

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A Locking Chest With A Musical Key

April 17, 2012 by Mike Nathan 31 Comments

music-detecting-box

[Basil Shikin] was thinking about different types of locks, and was trying to come up with a locking solution that he had yet to see. It dawned on him that he had never come across a lock triggered by music, so he set off to construct one of his own.

He ordered a wooden chest online, then proceeded to piece together the electronics required for the locking mechanism as well as the music detecting logic. Using an Atmega328P paired with an electret mic, his system listens for a particular tune (the Prelude of Light from the Ocarina of Time) to be played , which triggers a tiny servo to undo the latch. To do this, he implemented a version of the Goertzel Algorithm on the Arduino, allowing him to accurately detect the magical tune by frequency, regardless of what instrument it is played on.

Be sure to check out the video below to see his musical lock in action.

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A New And Improved Magnetic Cello

April 17, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 9 Comments

Over the past few months, [Magnetovore] has been working on his magnetic cell project. It’s a very interesting instrument that seems right out of the electronic music explosion of the 1970s. Now, he’s ready to share his invention with the world, and we wouldn’t be surprised if we see this instrument being picked up by a few avant-garde musicians in the next few years.

Last September, we were introduced to [Magnetovore]’s magnetic cello. The original version used four ribbon sensors for each of the strings and had completely analog electronics, leaving us wondering why this cello wasn’t invented in the 70s. The new version of the cello keeps the analog electronics that sound remarkably like a real acoustic cello, but does away with three of the ribbon sensors. Now the cello has a single ribbon sensor being used as all four strings – to change which string is played, the musician just has to press a button on the ‘bow’.

There is a drawback to using only one ribbon sensor; it’s now impossible to play two strings simultaneously as on an acoustic cello. The electronics in [Magnetovore]’s original magnetic cello were monophonic anyway, so we’ll chalk this design change-up to reducing component cost.

After the break, you can check out a trio of very talented cellists playing [Magnetovore]’s magnetic cello. There’s the classic Pokemon Center theme, the Mario Bros. theme, as well a Bach minuet and a crazy improvisation showing off what the magnetic cello can do.

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Barrel Organ Made From Lego Plays The Star Wars Theme

April 15, 2012 by Mike Nathan 36 Comments

Whether or not you are a fan of the first installment of the Star Wars prequels, you have to see what [Lorenz Lnggrtnr] and [Renee Hoffmeister] have put together for the movie’s 3D debut.

In an attempt to capture the essence of Star Wars in a new fashion, they constructed a large barrel organ from Lego bricks that plays the movie’s legendary opening theme when turned. The barrel is separated into four parts, each representing one of the series’ iconic settings in plastic block form.

Hoth, the Death Star, Tatooine, and Endor are all featured on the organ, with each environment’s structures playing specific notes from the song. As the barrel turns each Lego structure toggles a note to be played on the attached organ, via a “reading” mechanism built from metal arms and Lego tires.

It looks fantastic, and sounds pretty decent too. Be sure to stick around for a short video that shows off the barrel organ in action.

[via Wired]

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Arduino MIDI Sequencer Displays A Lot Of Data

April 13, 2012 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

This Arduino MIDI sequencer has no shortage of ways to display loop info. The screen above is a touch-sensitive interface that acts as the user input. But if this screen is not visible, you can still see which tracks have activated samples for each beat and what effects are being used. That’s thanks to the collection of display boards which are shown in the video after the break.

The setup acts as the MIDI front end, relying on other hardware to generate the samples. It presents all of the options through several pages on the 320×240 touch screen display. The Ardunio Mega is responsible for monitoring the UI data, crafting and sending the MIDI commands, as well as updating the LED-based display boards. These include bar graphs for the various effects, a four row by sixteen pixel beat pattern display, and 7-segment displays to track the current location within the loop. All in that’s 368 LEDs driven by 18 shift registers.

Update: Link to a gallery can be found after the break as well.

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