A New Machine

Posted by admin on July 27th, 2008 filed in I and I, music

I’ve spent most of this week in a beautifully decrepit building in Liverpool which houses a number of artists [pictures here]. Sarah Nicolls and I have been carrying out some experiments into the use of motors and other actuators to play the insides of various pianos. This is part of a larger research project into expanding (sometimes via destroying) pianos that Sarah’s undertaking. The software side of the system I’ve been building uses a combination of preset patterns and FFT based analysis to provide a method for the real-time manipulation of these patterns using sound rather than some kind of sensor or MIDI interface. The sound input and FFT analysis offers a way of skewing the preset patterns (routines which trigger specific motors in turn) with the sound they produce when stiking and plucking strings, creating a generative feedback system within the piano. This will eventually become a far less messy system that Sarah can use in performance and will generate patterns in response to her playing, but this is still in the early stages and a lot more work needs to be done on the analysis and pattern generation side of things. The results of the week have been quite pleasing, sometimes trance inducing, so below are a few short examples (just of the preset patterns).

It’s now back to the drawing board to figure out how to add a few solenoids and steppers to the system which is currently made up of various DC motors, as can be seen in the image above.

Three tiny clips from a week’s work: