This page presents Music 250a 2020 final projects. The documentation session of these projects was carried out in very special circumstances, only a few days before the Covid-19 pandemic blew up in the USA. Hence, unlike previous years, many students had to prepare the documentation of their project in their dorm room or back home, etc.
Breaker is a wireless, audio feedback-based instrument. It is housed inside an old electrical breaker box found in the San Francisco Bay. One piezoelectric microphone is attached to the walls of the box and picks up physical taps and hits. A small lavalier microphone mounted inside a tube attached to the box picks up vocals. This microphone also picks up sound from the speakers and creates audio feedback that must be controlled by the performer. Both microphones send audio input wirelessly to a laptop. Six knobs on the box wirelessly send parameter control values to the laptop using XBee modules. This allows for filter, delay, feedback, and resonance values to be adjusted by a performer. Unexpected rhythms thus emerge, persist, and fade during a performance with Breaker.
The Harmonizer allows you to create and control vocal harmonies while playing a synthesizer at the same time. The harmonies are chosen automatically as a function of the chords you are playing. The synthesizer chords determine how much to pitch shift copies of your voice in order to create two different harmonies. The volume of each voice (main voice and harmonies) can be controlled individually using the knobs on the instrument. All the chords are major by default, but the "minor" button can be pressed to turn a chord into minor. The synthesizer can be played by pressing the button of the desired chord and pressing the FSR (Force Sensitive Resistor) to control the envelope of the gain.
The Gutter Synth controls eight digitally implemented Duffing Oscillators, which mimic damped and forced physical circuits. My instrument has two parts: strings to control six of the oscillators' individual parameters (by pushing, pulling, and stretching them) and a master control with a more traditional interface of knobs and switches. The instrument is unpredictable, swinging between highly physical and chaotic sounds and organ-like drones, bleeps, and bloops.
GraInstrument is a controller for the granular synthesis instrument that I built in MaxMSP by using some external packages called MUBU and SPAT developed in IRCAM. The instrument includes four softpot potentiometers, one force sensitive sensor and an accelerometer. The instrument is designed such a way that parameters of position, duration, frequency and transposition of the grains can be controlled in an interactive way. The synthesized sound encoded in ambisonics and the rotation speed of the sound source can be controlled with one of the circular potentiometer. With the help of the accelerometer, the sound sample can be changed with a designated gesture. Briefly, GraInstrument provides an expressive performance to its user by creating an interaction between sound and movement.
The instrument utilizes two piezos, connected to L and R of the Teensy , to give you the user haptic control over two types of sound—a rumbling bass from a comb filter and an ambient strike (lots of reverb). Each sound corresponds to a different teensy. There are two softpots, one circular, one linear. The linear controls the pitch of the ambient strike, the circular controls the delay (and so the pitch) of the comb-filter bass.
The most demanding part of this project was the fabrication. The box is laser cut from .25in acrylic, the arm supports were 3D printed and the wooden panels were cut, varnished, and painted. Although I would have like the box to glow, the spray paint let little light through and so only the emblem at the front lights up when the device is on.
As for a name, Bachx will do (until I think of something better) because it plays equivalently good music and it is a box.
The Cellonet is an electronic hybrid instrument, combining the interfaces of string and wind instruments, specifically the cello and clarinet. One generates sound by blowing into the instrument through the mouthpiece. Through the air pressure sensor, the musician is able to control the production of sound, gain, vibrato gain, and articulation. The function of the mouthpiece is equivalent to that of a bow. One carries out a tune by the “strings”, which are extended SoftPot Membrane Potentiometers placed over the fingerboard. These sensors allow for continuous control of pitch and the expressive qualities enabled by that of a string instrument’s interface, such as glissandi and variations in vibrato distance. The Cellonet offers two instrumental modes: a clarinet and cello model.
My project is called the Hybrid Ocarina. It has a similar function to an ocarina but a different form. It is activated by blowing into the mouthpiece, and pitch of the instrument changes depending on which buttons are pressed. The instrument also introduces vibrato that increases in amplitude as the instrument is tilted.
Based loosely on a Rubik's cube, Happycube is a puzzle designed to give sonified feedback whenever the user gets closer or further from the solved state. As the user turns the knobs that control the colors of the LEDs (in a non-obvious way), the puzzle emits more consonant tones based on how close the configuration of LEDs is to all yellows.
QWERTY was conceived as a platform for bringing two nearly universal interfaces--language and typing--into the digital music space. The current mapping on QWERTY takes acoustic information from the sound of typing, scratching, and jostling the keys, and synthesizes a digital sound influenced by the phoenetic sound of the most recent keys pressed, sculpting the digital resonators as the letters would our mouths.
The Vocomote is a vocal processing pedal along with a wired remote. The pedal features a 4in x 6 in box design with 4 knobs and a power LED. The remote features a pentagonal prism design with an accelerometer, an FSR synced to an LED, and a button. On the box, the 4 knobs control pitch shift of the input signal, distortion, a high-pass filter cutoff, and delay time. On the remote, the FSR controls the mix of the effected signal. The button enables the user to modify the feedback and pitch shift in delay line using the X and Y axes of the accelerometer.
The goal of the project was to allow me to control complex vocal effects live. The Vocomote allows me to do my own vocal effects live at venues without having to rely on the sound engineer on hand. I can also use the device expressively beyond the means of any live venue sound man.
My next goal is to make a more sleek design, enable some more vocal effects, and make the remote truly wireless. I think this would be handy tool for vocalists and other instrumentalists who want to have unique and independent control over their sound.
The Stoplight is an "electronic rain stick" that Jeremy Raven has prepared for his final project in Music 250A. It uses a Teensy 4.0 to synthesize its sound, and is controlled by a Sparkfun accelerometer and four Uxcell potentiometers. Just as with a rain stick, The Stoplight produces its music as one flips it over. It gets its name from its uncanny visual resemblance to a traffic signal.
This is an instrument built off of the idea of a black box, which is a device with known inputs and outputs, but unknown inner workings. The parameters for changing sound are hidden to the user, and they must interact with (i.e. tilt the box) to figure out how to change the sound.
The Thereluz is a love letter to the theremin and a perfect medium for any and all sci-fi sound effects and music! It is a light-powered device, using photoresistors to control pitch, RGB sensors to control timbre, and a potentiometer to control gain. It also has a calibration button that adjusts the photoresistors and RGB sensors to the light or color in a given room. The Thereluz is also an experiment in human-technology interaction, since it primarily designed to be played with a phone screen and flashlight and has an accompanying app that allows users to easily change colors and timbres: https://thereluz.glitch.me/.
Manguera is an embodied instrument that connects electronic sound synthesis with the most natural filter humans possess: the mouth. While notes and chords are created using intuitive controls, the sound is output through a tube. This overall timbre can thus be changed by altering mouth's cavity and moving lips and tongue to create resonances. Manguera is an embedded system, running Faust code on a Teensy 4.0. As it's battery-powered and cable-less, bring it to any jam session to add an interesting flavor combining technology and embodied performance.
A crystal Shakuhachi (Japanese transverse flute) with a haunting sound that ebs and flows like waves in a storm.