Flute Now Included On List Of Human Interface Devices

April 24, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 16 Comments

For decades now, we’ve been able to quickly and reliably interface musical instruments to computers. These tools have generally made making and recording music much easier, but they’ve also opened up a number of other out-of-the-box ideas we might not otherwise see or even think about. For example, [Joren] recently built a human interface device that lets him control a computer’s cursor using a flute instead of the traditional mouse.

Rather than using a MIDI interface, [Joren] is using an RP2040 chip to listen to the flute, process the audio, and interpret that audio before finally sending relevant commands to control the computer’s mouse pointer. The chip is capable of acting as a mouse on its own, but it did have a problem performing floating point calculations to the audio. This was solved by converting these calculations into much faster fixed point calculations instead. With a processing improvement of around five orders of magnitude, this change allows the small microcontroller to perform all of the audio processing.

[Joren] also built a Chrome browser extension that lets a flute player move a virtual cursor of sorts (not the computer’s actual cursor) from within the browser, allowing those without physical hardware to try out their flute-to-mouse skills. If you prefer your human interface device to be larger, louder, and more trombone-shaped we also have a trombone-based HID for those who play the game Trombone Champ.

Wozamp Turns Apple II Into Music Player

April 10, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 9 Comments

Besides obvious technological advancements, early computers built by Apple differed in a major way from their modern analogs. Rather than relying on planned obsolescence as a business model, computers like the Apple II were designed to be upgradable and long-term devices users would own for a substantially longer time than an iPhone or Macbook. With the right hardware they can even be used in the modern era as this project demonstrates by turning one into a music player.

The requirements for this build are fairly short; an Apple II with a serial card and a piece of software called surl-server which is a proxy that allows older computers to communicate over modern networks. In this case it handles transcoding and resampling with the help of a Raspberry Pi 3. With that all set up, the media player can play audio files in an FTP network share or an online web radio station. It can also display album art on the Apple II monitor and includes a VU meter that is active during playback.

Although the 11.52 kHz sampling rate and 5-bit DAC may not meet the stringent requirements of audiophile critics, it’s an impressive build for a machine of this era. In fact, the Apple II has a vibrant community still active in the retrocomputing world, with plenty of projects built for it including others related to its unique audio capabilities. And if you don’t have an original Apple II you can always get by with an FPGA instead.

Documenting Real Hidden Messages In Music

March 25, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 22 Comments

During the 1980s, a moral panic swept across the landscape with the mistaken belief that there were Satanic messages hidden in various games, books, and music that at any moment would corrupt the youth of the era and destroy society as we knew it. While completely unfounded, it turns out that there actually were some hidden messages in vinyl records of the time although they’d corrupt children in a different way, largely by getting them interested in computer science. [Dandu] has taken to collecting these historic artifacts, preserving the music and the software on various hidden recordings.

While it was possible to record only programs or other data to vinyl, much in the same way that cassette tapes can be used as a storage medium, [Dandu]’s research focuses mostly on records, tapes, and CDs which had data included alongside music. This includes not only messages or images, but often entire computer programs. In some cases these programs were meant to be used with the accompanying music, as was the case for The Other Side Of Heaven by Kissing The Pink with a program for the BBC Micro. Plenty of other contemporary machines are represented here too including the ZX Spectrum, Atari, Apple II, and the Commodore 64. The documentation extends through the CD era and even into modern music platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

The process of extraction and recovery is detailed for each discovery, making it a comprehensive resource for retro computing enthusiasts stretching from the 80s to now. There are likely a few hidden pieces of data out there hidden in various antique storage media that [Dandu] hasn’t found yet, either. You could even make your own records with hidden programs provided you have some musical and programming talents, and a laser engraver for the record itself.

Generative AI Now Encroaching On Music

March 22, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 62 Comments

While it might not seem like it to a novice, music turns out to be a highly mathematical endeavor with precise ratios between chords and notes as well as overall structure of rhythm and timing. This is especially true of popular music which has even more recognizable repeating patterns and trends, making it unfortunately an easy target for modern generative AI which is capable of analyzing huge amounts of data and creating arguably unique creations. This one, called Suno, does just that for better or worse.

Unlike other generative AI offerings that are currently available for creating music, this one is not only capable of generating the musical underpinnings of the song itself but can additionally create a layer of intelligible vocals as well. A deeper investigation of the technology by Rolling Stone found that the tool uses its own models to come up with the music and then offloads the text generation for the vocals to ChatGPT, finally using the generated lyrics to generate fairly convincing vocals. Like image and text generation models that have come out in the last few years, this has the potential to be significantly disruptive.

While we’re not particularly excited about living in a world where humans toil while the machines create art and not the other way around, at best we could hope for a world where real musicians use these models as tools to enhance their creativity rather than being outright substitutes, much like ChatGPT itself currently is for programmers. That might be an overly optimistic view, though, and only time will tell.

Ancient Instrument Goes Digital: The Digi-Gurdy

March 18, 2024 by Donald Papp 11 Comments

The hurdy-gurdy is a fascinating string instrument dating from sometime around the 10th century. There is an active community of modern enthusiasts, but one can’t simply walk into a music shop and buy one. That’s where [XenonJohn] and the Digi-Gurdy come in, bringing some nice features while maintaining all the important elements of the original.

The mechanical keys and crank of the Hurdy-Gurdy are preserved in this modern digital incarnation.

The hurdy-gurdy works by droning strings with a rotating wheel, and the player applies pressure to those strings via keys to play combinations of notes. Here’s a video demonstrating what it sounds like to play one, and one can see a conceptual resemblance to bagpipes, among other things.

The Digi-Gurdy is a modern electronic version that maintains the mechanical elements while sending MIDI signals over USB. It has options for line-out or headphone output. A thriving online community has shaped its development since its inception years ago.

We hope this leaves you wanting to know more because [XenonJohn] has loads of details to share. The main website at digigurdy.com is jam-packed with information about this instrument and its construction, and the project page on Hackaday.io has more nitty-gritty design details and source files for those who crave hardware specifics.

If [XenonJohn]’s name sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve admired his work on DIY self-balancing vehicles over the years. He also submitted an earlier version as an entry into the Hackaday Prize. His careful attention to detail shines through. Check out the two videos (embedded just below the page break): the first demonstrates the Digi-Gurdy, and the second shows off the construction and insides. You’d think a MIDI hurdy-gurdy would be unique, but, actually, we’ve seen more than one.

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Raspinamp: It Really Replicates Questionable Activities Involving Llamas

March 7, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 22 Comments

In the late 90s as MP3s and various file sharing platforms became more common, most of us were looking for better players than the default media players that came with our operating systems, if they were included at all. To avoid tragedies like Windows Media Center, plenty of us switched to Winamp instead, a much more customizable piece of software that helped pave the way for the digital music revolution of that era. Although there are new, official versions of Winamp currently available, nothing really tops the nostalgia of the original few releases of the software which this project faithfully replicates in handheld form.

The handheld music player uses a standard Raspberry Pi (in this case, a 3B) and a 3.5″ TFT touchscreen display, all enclosed in a clear plastic case. With all of the Pi configuration out of the way, including getting the touchscreen working properly, the software can be set up. It uses QMMP as a media player with a Winamp skin since QMMP works well on Linux systems with limited resources. After getting it installed there’s still some configuration to do to get the Pi to start it at boot and also to fit the player perfectly into the confines of the screen without any of the desktop showing around the edges.

Although it doesn’t use the original Winamp software directly, as that would involve a number of compatibility layers and/or legacy hardware at this point, we still think it’s a faithful recreation of how the original looked and felt on our Windows 98 machines. With a battery and a sizable SD card, this could have been the portable MP3 player many of us never knew we wanted until the iPod came out in the early 00s, and would certainly still work today for those of us not chained to a streaming service. A Raspberry Pi is not the only platform that can replicate the Winamp experience, though. This player does a similar job with the PyPortal instead.

Continue reading “Raspinamp: It Really Replicates Questionable Activities Involving Llamas” →

Reggaeton-Be-Gone Disconnects Obnoxious Bluetooth Speakers

February 23, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 29 Comments

If you’re currently living outside of a Spanish-speaking country, it’s possible you’ve only heard of the music genre Reggaeton in passing, if at all. In places with large Spanish populations, though, it would be more surprising if you hadn’t heard it. It’s so popular especially in the Carribean and Latin America that it’s gotten on the nerves of some, most notably [Roni] whose neighbor might not do anything else but listen to this style of music, which can be heard through the walls. To solve the problem [Roni] is now introducing the Reggaeton-Be-Gone. (Google Translate from Spanish)

Inspired by the TV-B-Gone devices which purported to be able to turn off annoying TVs in bars, restaurants, and other places, this device can listen to music being played in the surrounding area and identify whether or not it is hearing Reggaeton. It does this using machine learning, taking samples of the audio it hears and making decisions based on a trained model. When the software, running on a Raspberry Pi, makes a positive identification of one of these songs, it looks for Bluetooth devices in the area and attempts to communicate with them in a number of ways, hopefully rapidly enough to disrupt their intended connections.

In testing with [Roni]’s neighbor, the device seems to show promise although it doesn’t completely disconnect the speaker from its host, instead only interfering with it enough for the neighbor to change locations. Clearly it merits further testing, and possibly other models trained for people who use Bluetooth speakers when skiing, hiking, or working out. Eventually the code will be posted to this GitHub page, but until then it’s not the only way to interfere with your neighbor’s annoying stereo.

Thanks to [BaldPower] and [Alfredo] for the tips!