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, no [...]

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, [...]

Here is a collection of tips and tricks to produce current popular genres (Hip-Hop, House and Electro in particular) found freely on the Internet, and presented into the pattern form.
The pattern form
This means each trick or set of related tricks is given an expressive name along with a short description of its intent. Full description [...]

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 transforms, [...]

Here are two videos, pictures and explanations about my experiments to generate rhythmic music using laser beams in a clock fashion.

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.

Over time I have built up a significant library of sounds, mostly single-note samples, but with some loops as well. All these sounds were collected legally, usually through online registration to loop and samples vendors websites, by following the process they propose so that we can test the quality of what they offer.
Collecting samples along [...]

Just like many arts, music arousal is considered to follow the well-known Wundt curve that defines the balance between attractiveness and boredom. Too much repetition is boring, not enough repetition is confusing and considered just noise.
What for?
Let us assert that idea to music, to generate rhythms. A very simple application of the Wundt curve principle [...]