Drum Resonance and Feedback, Fall 2012

Inspired by Daniel Fishkin's Lady's Harp, this past fall I began experimenting with tactile transducers, contact mics, and drums to create feedback loops based on a drum's resonant frequencies. Using Max/Msp and a simple stereo amplifier I am able to drive the drum at one of these frequencies and then manipulate the sounds through looping, pitch shifting, and simply tuning the drum with a drum key. I am still getting the hang of playing this new instrument, but the hope is to be able to incorporate this into a solo project soon.

Feedback Sample 1
Feedback Sample 2
Feedback Sample 3

Player Piano, Spring 2013

This spring I built some electronics for artist Adam Smith's work "Untitled (Player Piano)". The piano has 14 solenoid-actuated keys which play in time with a midi loop. The midi notes are grouped and filtered in Max/Msp and then sent via serial to an Arduino running some simple code, which then toggles 14 channels on a separate driver board actuating the solenoids and the keys.

Testing

In Action