If you happen to dwell in a serious metropolis, you’ve most likely seen a road performer with some number of slapophone. It’s a easy musical instrument that sometimes makes use of completely different lengths of PVC pipe to behave as resonant cavities. When struck with an implement like a flip-flop, they launch a boring however nice tone. [Ivan Miranda] determined to construct such an instrument himself and went even additional by giving it MIDI functionality. Test it out within the video under.
[Ivan’s] design makes use of a easy trick to supply a variety of notes without having a variety of particular person pipes. He constructed 4 telescoping pipe assemblies, every of which might change size with the help of a stepper motor and a toothed belt drive. Lengthening the cavity produces a decrease word, whereas shortening it produces a better word. The 4 pipe assemblies are electronically managed to supply notes despatched from a MIDI keyboard, all underneath the command of an Arduino. The pipes are struck by specifically constructed paddles product of yoga mats, once more managed by massive stepper motors.
The ultimate result’s massive, power-hungry, and vaguely playable. It’s somewhat unconventional, although, as a result of shifting the pipes takes time. Thus, keypresses on a MIDI keyboard set the pipes to a given word, however don’t really play it. The slapping of the pipe is then triggered with a drum pad.
We love bizarre devices round these elements.
