Beam Beats is an interactive and tangible rhythm sequencer that translates the geometry of beacons on the ground into rhythms and polyrhythms thanks to a rotating laser beam. This experimental MIDI instrument is about investigating self-similarities in polyrhythms, as described in this post. Before I report more on this project with demos and videos, here [...]
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Tags: arduino, beam beats, clock, controllerism, experimental, geometric, hardware, interactive, laser, midi, midi controller, musical instrument, Physical Computing, rhythm, self-similarity, sequencer, tangible
Posted in Beam Beats, Music, Physical Computing • Comments Off
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, [...]
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Tags: accessibility, drum machine, interactive, midi, Music, musical instrument
Posted in Music • 1 Comment »
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, [...]
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Tags: beam beats, beat, beatmaking, diy, drum machine, electronic, generative, interactive, midi, Music, project, rhythm, sequencer, swing
Posted in Beam Beats, Music, Physical Computing • 2 Comments »
Here is an example of how to use the same knobs (e-g. 6 knobs easy to connect to the 6 Arduino analog inputs) several times to adjust several parameters spread over several « pages ». This enables to « multiplex » the same knobs many times, in a safely fashion thanks to the protection mecanism: after changing the active [...]
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Tags: arduino, electronics, hacking, interface, library, midi, midi controller, sensors
Posted in Physical Computing • 1 Comment »
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.
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Tags: accessibility, arduino, instrument, interactive, interface, midi, Music
Posted in Music, Physical Computing • 2 Comments »