For my final project, I wanted to create something that fulfilled a couple of things:
- Something interactive and approachable - easy to pick up and understand, without immediately alienating people
- Tying the project into synesthesia in some way and being able to convey that to the user or audience; in this case, breaking the established notions of a classical instrument
- Adding to the above two, something that could ultimately produce a clear, intelligent series of melodies and sounds in the hands of someone proficient in an existing instrument
Linked is an example of 8 floppy drives used to produce music.
Floppy drives also provide something of a utility in terms of allowing someone with no formal training to play an instrument: while both synthesized and acoustic instruments often have to worry about tuning, timbre, pitch sliding (glissando), modulation (vibrato), etc. the floppy drives are mostly relegated to producing "flat" notes, covering all 12 semitones across approximately 4 of the lower octaves. In terms of configuration and inputs, I was thinking something similar to this:
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| The diagram is just to illustrate function, rather than trying to explicitly lay out the form yet. |
1. Similar to the sliders on a mixing board, the input for switching semitone or key is a single slider, with each of the twelve divisions corresponding to a semitone. Note that the slider's movements would be fluid and consistent like a light switch slider rather than "locking in" to one of twelve slots, using the Arduino to detect the slider's position within each of the twelve sections.
2. The four buttons on the right are to change between the four octaves.
3. The first large button is a binary switch that simply tells the floppy drive whether to stay "on" and sustain a note or not. That being said, it's worth keeping in mind that floppy drives generally have a limit on how long a note they can sustain (generally lasting 6+ seconds) due to it only having so much of a "track" to run on.
4. The fourth button is designed to be used concurrently with the third, allowing the user to switch between legato and monophonic play. To those unfamiliar with music theory (or the potential mechanics behind the device), using only a slider for keys and an on-off switch for sound would mean that you would have to transition through every single note between the original note you sustain and the one you want to hit after. So, for example, let's say I wanted to hit a B flat note and then immediately transition to a G flat note. Using legato play, I would have to slide downwards (left to right in this diagram), going:
B -> Bb -> A -> Ab -> G
Which, while effective in certain compositions intended for it, may not be effective in a faster piece of music where the user wanted to transition directly from one note to one it doesn't neighbor (which is extremely common). This fluid transition between neighboring notes is known as a scale, though generally only specifically applies to running through an entire register or octave of escalating notes. However, if I were to hold down the fourth button, it would switch to monophonic - a term typically associated with synthesizers - and would hold the initial B flat note until I let go of the button. That means by hitting B, holding Button 4, sliding down to G and then releasing the button, I could make a direct transition of:
B -> G
This allows for a large number of possibilities in composition and real-time play with the instrument.
5. The fifth "button" would simply be an LED (or series of LEDs) that light up as notes are played.
6. A few buttons near the LED would be toggles working independently of the rest of the board, being used for arpeggiator presets. An arpeggio consists of notes in a chord being played independently rather than being "strummed" to create a single flowing sound up or down in tone. Here's an example.
There are a ton of possible progressions / variations in arpeggio, though a few basic ones (such as a repeating up - down - up - down or call - answer progression) would be realistic to program and implement in the given amount of time.
