Electric Maraca and Friends - MIDI Enabled Instruments

Inspiration

This project was inspired by the music of Andrew Huang, Aphex Twin, SquarePusher, and Burial.

What it does

Our project uses an Arduino to digitize signals from Piezoelectric discs, which act as drum triggers. Additionally, the Arduino handles digital input from the electric maraca. These signals are processed and then passed to a computer via a Serial bus. This data is translated into MIDI signals and passed to FL Studio where it triggers notes, drums, and effects for creating music.

How we built it

We split up into several groups handling the MIDI, piezo-contact microphones, and music production between subgroups.

Challenges we ran into

The initial MIDI interface used a usb to midi bus to convert signals directly to MIDI instead of passing them through the Serial bus. In the process the converter was damaged beyond repair. To fix this we implemented the aforementioned solution.

Accomplishments and Demos

Our group is incredibly proud of our own Joey Carlson's cover of Shake it Off made using exclusively sounds recorded here at the hackathon, with a microphone built here at the hackathon.

Joey's awesome cover can be found here: https://youtu.be/9V5lDCFfyew

Marika's demo tracks can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/user-786752383/electric-maraca-suite/s-HDaZG

What we learned

We've learned a great deal about MIDI and signal processing, as well as using electronics to enhance music production workflow.

What's next for the Illustrious Electric Maraca and Friends

My group hopes to make use of these instruments to create super cool blips, boops, and the music of the future.

This project was really shooting to win the best music hack here at hackcwru! Hope you enjoyed, have a great day.

Built With

• arduino
• c++
• fl-studio
• midi.js
• piezoelectrics
• pocket-operator
• processing
• python