The Make Bit

Blog (13.11.17): Through this process I have been making lots of musical decisions when deconstructing and reconstructing my own and other's compositions into smaller loop size chunks, sorting tempos, instruments, layers and keys.

I like the idea of having my own composition reconstructed with Makey Makey. The timber is very string focused and I would like to incorporate that in what I use to activate the Makey Makey. I've tested some different materials including play-dough and copper wire, but came across and old violin and going to try to "activate" it!

Bare Conductive has a nice element where you can just power it up and use the paint to create a more flexible connection without the wires connected everywhere. I've been experimenting with some 3D modeling to use as a display item to bring it together. I was considering this while making the loops as needed to determine how many loops and how many activation points I needed. I discovered some fairly straight forward 3D printing modeling software called "Tinkercad" I also looked at "Freecad" but found Tinkercad much easier. Both open source which means there are lots of user generated designs as well that can help out a new beginner like me too!

In true Maker Movement fashion I discovered an online hub for 3D printing that helped me locate a 3D printer and source a few different quotes. The price ranges were incredible from $50-$500+ for the one design! So I've put my order in and hoping it will be ready in time for this project completion!

Makey Makey will also be linked through Scratch. This enables me to program in the sounds that I want with specific key presses . As a student, you could get very creative with how you wanted to graphically represent your composition activation with considerations to structure and layers - this could even pass as some graphic notation! I've gone the more symbolic approach. As my composition instruments have a nice resonate feel, I've programmed them to appear when clicked, and have them hanging in a backdrop of the Sydney Opera house - you know, where all my compositions will be played! :P

Now it's about connecting up my activation object - the violin. Throughout this project I have been playing around with lots of different materials and ideas. My initial idea was to activate some artwork, but I got too lost in trying to get the artwork idea and how that effects the music idea. As this is a music project, I went with music first and what suits this piece. I thought it would be good to have an existing instrument be used to activate another. Turns out though the violin is very "conductive"! As each string touches each other at some point, pressing one down sets off the other sounds. I've had to be creative then in how I use it, another problem to solve.