Tic Tac Tunes - Now with Tic Tac Beat Box

Step 8 Future Development

This project is actually a spin-off from another one which I wouldn't have time to complete for the sound contest. The other project has been at the planning stage for some time . . . about thirty years!! With my recent discovery of the PicAxe microcontroller, what I was planning becomes so much easier so I'll be cracking on with it now. (Once I've got a couple of other projects out of the way.)

The Project -
Many years ago I read the 'Vermilion Sands' series of short stories by J.G. Ballard and was intrigued by the 'Sonic Scupltures' which appear in several of the stories. These are sculptures which react in a musical way to the environment and to the presence of people. My first attempt at this was a bank of astable multivibrators made to change frequency in response to temperature and light, and interlinked so as to produce a wide range of bleeps, hoots, whistles and warbles (now I think about it, incredibly similar to theThingamagoop). This never got further than the workbench due to the pressures of 'real life'. With the PicAxe, making a polyphonic, environment sensing structure becomes much easier.

Comments

[Default117]

So you must be left handed?

[AndyGadget]

Yep, you're right. I was thinking this while I was making it, but forgot to mention it. Probably the simplest way is just to position the strip at the bottom of the box instead of the top and turn it around. It's then fine for the righties ;¬) I'll update the text.

[mdog93]

is this quite like a stylophone?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO62prDw66I
mdog

[AndyGadget]

My design is different in several ways. The (original) stylophone (as advertised by Rolf Harris in the UK) was a very simple oscillator circuit with the frequencies set directly by a resistor chain. It has pre-set notes on the keyboard, uses a full chromatic scale, and the guy in the video can play it properly. It is dedicated hardware and can do only one thing. My design uses a small microcontroller chip and a continuous resistive track which is decoded into key positions by the software so I can have different numbers of notes on the upper and lower track. No note positions (or percussion sound positions) are fixed. I have programmed in different musical scales - ones which sound better for improvisation (or if you're absolutely no good on a proper keyboard ;¬). The design is fully flexible and if I changed a couple of the surrounding components for different sensors and reprogrammed it, it could become a light sensing alarm, an intruder detector or a plant watering alarm etc, etc. This is the difference between the electronics capabilities of the sixties and the 2000's.

[mdog93]

so u cant rely play songs on this then

[AndyGadget]

Yep, you can, but think trombone rather than clarinet . You have to remember where each note is rather than having marked positions. Because of the interest, I'm planning a rebuild of this to make it easier to construct and will be losing the percussion and adding more features to the keyboard sounds. It would then be possible to actually mark the note positions on the scale. With the five or six note scales I've got in there at the moment, the range spans three octaves. With a chromatic scale (which a lot of western music is written in) I'd limit this to an octave and a half (enough for a lot of tunes) otherwise the notes get too close together. I need to get some more files posted, so check back later and I'll have added the chromatic scale.