JORDAN
LANGLEY
The SYNstrument is an acoustic synthesizer hybrid, designed to help bridge the gap between electronic and acoustic instruments.
Motivation
The original concept for this project was to create a playable robotic instrument that incorporated both acoustic and electronic sounds.
From an early age, I learned to play an array of acoustic instruments such as piano, drums, and guitar. However, as I grew older I became heavily invested in the technological side of music, working on production and sound design.
It is only in the last few years I have revisited my appreciation for acoustic instruments, and have begun to resent the disconnect I had formed between the world of acoustic instruments and sound synthesis.
In conclusion, the motivation behind this musical endeavor is to bridge the gap that had been constructed by my own and many other’s minds, to combine the world of acoustic instrumentation and sound synthesis.
Technical Specs
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Arduino UNO, which provided the base for the entire project.
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Sound sniffer with a coil pickup, used to pick up sound.
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Amplifier, connecting the sound sniffer to the speaker and powering it.
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12v Motor, with a variable speed that was set by the potentiometer.
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MOSFET, that provided power to the motor.
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Potentiometer, used to control the motor speed and frequency of the tone library.
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Buttons, to switch between instrument modes.
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LEDs, to indicate which function is active.
Design Process
The design process began by coming up with as many ideas as possible, to later be assessed and narrowed down to one. I knew that the Arduino's in-built tone library was something I wanted to include, as I had experimented with it before and was impressed by the range of sounds that it could create.
The next step was figuring out how to control the tone. I considered the various possible inputs I could use to modulate the tone, such as IR sensors, light sensors, piezo disks, etc. but found that a potentiometer was the best choice. I came to this conclusion as the potentiometer is something that is found on nearly every synthesizer, usually called a knob. Virtual and physical knobs are used to control a variety of parameters on hard/software synthesizers, such as filter cut-off, pitch, etc. so the potentiometer fitted the concept like a glove.
Now that the input had been decided upon, it was time to select an output. I considered using a piezo disk but felt this was too minimalistic. Instead, I chose to use a motor, as not only would it be visible and eye-catching, but It could add an extra sound element to the instrument, as one could modulate the motor's speed while simultaneously changing the tone.
Now that the fundamental synthesizer elements of my design were chosen, I began thinking about the acoustic side of things, referring to the section titled “Scraping: separating objects and interactions” of William Gaver’s How Do We Hear In The World? The motor seemed like the perfect option for this, as I could create interesting changes in pitch and tonality by attaching some form of plastic to a wheel, which could fit onto the motor and hit off a suspended string.
As the acoustic and synthesizer elements of the design had been decided upon, it was now time to figure out how one would switch between the two. It was decided to use two buttons, one for each mode, that when held, activated one of the potentiometers functions. When neither was pushed, the potentiometer became inactive. This allowed users to tap or hold the buttons for any desired duration to create interesting sound patterns and sequences. An LED also accompanied each button, which lights up when the button is pushed, to ensure the user knows what function/mode is enabled.
