In Tufts University's music engineering program, there's an emphasis on harnessing the musical expressiveness of unconventional objects. For my first project, I worked with a team of students to create a MIDI controller based around a rubber band.
I designed all the electronics for this project, processing the signals from each of the sensors to optimize the analog to digital conversion process in the Arduino. The data passed from the Arduino to the computer via USB is used by a visual programming environment called Max to control a software synthesizer in Reason. A piezo sensor detects when a note is plucked and the slide potentiometers on the back determines which note is sounded. The bend sensor controls expression, such as LFO or filter frequency, and the buttons control the octave of the instrument, as well as selecting which Reason patch the instrument is controlling. The LEDs serve as visual feedback for the player.
