This week Helen and I tried as best we could to understand the aspects of music theory and how it's played. At the moment we're struggling a little to make an instrument that can play not only notes but also triads and sustain notes as well. We'd like it to be as complete as possible. We're basing our concept on a Theremin but ideally we'd like it to have some automatized aspects so people that don't really know much about music can play melodies that have a full sound and not just a couple of notes.
OUR PROJECT
The way we're thinking about it working is having one ultrasonic sensor for note changing and another for amplitude. We'd like to find a way to sustain a particular note (perhaps while a button is held down) and another way to do scale changes (perhaps with a potentiometer) for the final deliverable.
So far we've tried using MIDI with a piano (first video) and a violin (second video). We're able to play the note by clicking the joystick and elongate it by moving it around but we haven't been able to switch around notes or play several at the same time.
OUR BOM
OUR CIRCUIT
OUR CODE
#include <MIDIUSB.h>
#include <pitchToNote.h>
int baseNote = 45;
int trigPin1=2;
int echoPin1=1;
int trigPin2=4;
int echoPin2=3;
void setup() {
// put your setup code here, to run once:
Serial.begin (9600);
pinMode(trigPin1, OUTPUT);
pinMode(echoPin1, INPUT);
pinMode(trigPin2, OUTPUT);
pinMode(echoPin2, INPUT);
}
void loop() {
// put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
long duration1, distance1;
digitalWrite(trigPin1, LOW); // Added this line
delayMicroseconds(2); // Added this line
digitalWrite(trigPin1, HIGH);
delayMicroseconds(10); // Added this line
digitalWrite(trigPin1, LOW);
duration1 = pulseIn(echoPin1, HIGH);
distance1 = (duration1/2) / 29.1;
if (distance != 0) {
int pitchBendSensor = distance << 5; // shift so top bit is bit 14
byte msb = highByte(pitchBendSensor); // get the high bits
byte lsb = lowByte(pitchBendSensor) >> 1; // get the low 8 bits
midiCommand(0xE0, lsb, msb); // send the pitch bend message
}
Serial.print ( "Sensor1 ");
Serial.print ( distance1);
Serial.println("cm");
}
delay(2000);