Technical Advice - David Merrill MIT MediaLab

Last week we contacted David Merill, an MIT PhD student who Dave met on a visit to the MediaLab Boston in March. We asked him for technical advice on implementing our prototype.

He advised that for interfacing percussive sensors to a computer, we could probably get by with multiple Arduinos if we sample quickly enough, or build a little pulse-stretching circuitry for our sensors. There is a growing community of Arduino users out there, so we'd likely be able to find someone who's already done something like what we're after. He advised that there are commercial interfaces that are designed specifically to detect impacts, such as the DM5 from Alesis ,but those would probably be more expensive.

He advised also that we'd be better off using Piezos rather than FSRs to detect impact, since they are more sensitive to percussive gesture. FSR might be better suited to aftertouch, or more long time-scale actions.

He also recommended we only use one sensor per bar because if we have a rigid bar, we're likely to get a similar signal from each sensor if we place multiple piezos on it, so a single one may be enough. this is worth testing to see what works best.

In terms of sound, he advised that mapping gesture to sound is where the real "art" of making a musical interfaces comes in - it's simultaneously the most important element of the design, and the one that is the most difficult to offer good advice about.

His final piece of advice was try lots of different possibilities, work with other people to get feedback along the way (especially musicians), and make sure the instrument remains nimble. ( i.e. able to start and stop sounds quickly, and able to expressively shape sounds in some way)

Thanks to David Merill!

Chris H