Final Proposal
Inspired by the stunning Japanese drum show KODO (http://goo.gl/9Y9OK) in Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago, Cheng & I had the idea of re-perform those variational and euphoric drum pattern by using a set of “drum robots”. In the show, there were less then 10 people and each handled one or two drums; everyone’s drum patterns are not very complicate but as a whole, these simple drum patterns mixed together and sounds subtle and amazing.
In this project, we are trying to build a couple of drumbots. Each bot have a certain function like LOOP, 2xSPEED, 2/SPEED, ONEtoTWO, etc, and each bot will pass get the drum pattern from it’s parent drum, generate a new drum pattern based on it’s own function, and pass it to the next drum. (We get inspired by Andy Huntington’s TapTap project. It’s awesome.) Each drum can also has different types of drumstick (wood, metal,etc) to make different sound, and some of the bots may have even 2 or 3 drumsticks to pass it’s pattern to more drum bots.
To test our thought, I spend a few days and write a dirty drum simulator with Processing. It’s pretty bad looking and simple functional, but it do shows the potential of the project.
We have sketched several potential look-and-feel for the drum bots and haven’t make a final decision, but we feel cube could be really compelling. Not only because it is simple and stable, but also because it has a potential to create more interesting combinations. It has 6 faces, which means it may get the beat pattern not only by it’s top face, but also it’s 4 side faces. All faces all the same, which means we can put robots down on one side or pile them up, like the right picture below.
The mechanical thing is annoying. We are trying to use Arduino as micro controller, solenoid as actuator and piazo sensor as input, and no usb, just battery. But after doing some experiment, we find the solenoid eat lots of power but still the beat is not good enough. This’s the another problem we need to solve beside the look-and-feel.
Here are today’s comments:
You should make a box that has two synchronized arms (two outputs), so that it functions like a Y-splitter!
Please articulate the way that this is different from TapTap. It looks very similar. I understand that there “is” a difference, I just want to hear you explain it.
See the the @sifteo Cubes and @modrobotics Cubelets for some additional important inspiration for modular robotics.
Nice, I think your original concept will be a lot easier (and funner) to use with physical components. Nice use of the extra dimension you get, too. You should make it a bunch of drummer teddy bears. Except with their drums on backwards and the bear plays the next bears drums!! Just kidding you don’t have to do that.
Maybe different sides of the cubes can have different material/diaphrams for the drum … tighter or looser skins can produce multiple tones in one cube …. and maybe wood vs metal can make different sounds all together.
This is a cool concept, but I’m curious how you’ll make this novel since this project has basically been done before. I mean, it’s OK if you just want to duplicate it, but I think there’s a lot of opportunity to improve on the existing stuff. Maybe you could incorporate light or create bots with two arms that choose an arm to “hit” with based on some sort of simple decision tree. Giving the robots a bit more intelligence could make it much more interesting.
In the world of drumming robots, this is my favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RyodnisVvU How can you make your robot as cute as this?
I think you should definitely play with the shape and appearance of the drums. It would make it more fun to listen to and look at. Try and make it look 3D maybe? OH and you can add a slight echo in the background. That’d be cool.
So you’re thinking about building the actual drum blocks? And then they would have to be programmed somehow, right? This seems ambitious for a 4-week project. I liked the idea for your original project; if Golan was OK with it, it could be cool to use the final project time to make that original project more robust – like, make the final result cooler and a bit more musical.
Looks a whole lot like TapTap. Maybe the function is more important than the physical form. How about using sensing cubes to manipulate the software? You can use a webcam or kinect to sense the location of the cubes.
Nice to continue working on this as a physical form, but agree with above that you should explore other forms and shapes that it could take. How many of these do you plan to hook up together? Also what materials are you thinking of using to create the drums?
Materials will make a huge difference, also, in addition to thinking about the drums.. What about the set-up / environment which they sit? I think you can make this a really immserive experience.
http://yourworldoftext.com/
What about “reflect”/”Reverse”, “skip one” basically all the Uno rules. +1
Boxes that are on their side are probably going to hit faster than ones upright because they don’t have to fight with gravity. Just keep this in mind so it doesn’t mess up your beats.
Perhaps do this by completing circuits instead of preassure sensors
Design of the housing is super critical. Maybe look to existing percusive instruments or natural elements which make percussive sounds…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada …again see eric singer…http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1279788
Solinoid concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_hiz-Kx0kM
I am impressed by your vision of hardware.
I’m interested in the conversation that is going on in crit about have it being modifiable rule-based stuff.
The stick could be made of different materials, such that sound changes between cubes (I wouldn’t go for spherical shapes because putting one on top of another might be tricky..) You could also add light to the cubes.. And then you have an audio composition plus more visual stuff :)
The 3D arrangement is pretty interesting
Is it worth it to program different behaviors for different boxes?
What about the off switch? It’s a secondary consideration, but if you have complicated arrangment, it may be difficult ot turn them off all at once…
I really like the idea of stacking them vertically, it’s an unusual, yet intuitive once you see it, approach to passing down (or up) this rhythm. A rhythmic tower is really cool. Agreed. I had a hard time following before, but this looks very easy to grasp.
This makes me think of sound dominoes.
How about making multiple of these, but when you put them close to each other, the sound produced is different? So it’s like a “social” interaction