Cyrille Martraire

On a Sunday afternoon, fifteen friends, all non musicians but two amateur musicians, joined the machines set in turn, around 8 at a time, to improvise electro or hip-hop rhythmic grooves. Of course there were food and drinks as well. The goal was to introduce music making in an attractive way: no pressure, no constraint, [...]

Following my ongoing work on a theory of rhythms and a corresponding physical instrument using lasers, here is a version of the same idea implemented into an Arduino: a generative sequencer. The idea is to generate rhythms, and perhaps melodies, from one rhythm seed, then use mutated copies of it to create something more interesting, [...]

In the post “Playing with laser beams to create very simple rhythms” I explained a theoretical approach that I want to materialize into an instrument. The idea is to create complex rhythms by combining several times the same rhythmic patterns, but each time with some variation compared to the original pattern. Several possible variations (or [...]

In this last part, we put ideas into practice to build an instrument dedicated to play solo for electronic music genres. We will use light sensors, buttons and an Arduino board to control MIDI synthesizers in a way that is attractive to both musicians and non musicians.

Musical instruments for musicians and non-musicians, part Two.
In this post we have a look at how making a musical instrument smarter (or more music-aware) can make it much easier, especially for beginners.

Musical instruments for musicians and non-musicians, part One: Controlling the sounds

In this first post of the series we will analyse how various instruments provide control to the human player, and how this makes them easier (playability) or more expressive.