2021-10-05 (Tu) EWC_Panel Concept

When I started the Electronic Windchimes (EWC) line of projects, I wanted to learn about music. I began by pseudo-randomly playing notes from a pentatonic scale. I planned to learn about what sounded accordant by minimizing the chance of recognizing a tune so I would never expect a known pattern. My plan worked well, but anyone with a musical background said it was hard to listen to for long. The problem was that there was no melody. For a device called "windchimes," this was fine.

The next things I want to experiment with are loops and percussion. I built a sloppy little drum machine a while ago, but it was minimal. I considered buying a drum machine, but none had the features I wanted with a comfortable price-point.

I am going to approach loops in the most modular fashion, but it will not be efficient. Each instrument will be a self-contained unit with identical controls. I will build as many as I need, and I can add commercial MIDI instruments.

Enough background
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I sketched out my ideas for the functionality of each panel. The cornerstone of the project will be a timer box that will periodically send a MIDI sync signal out the data line. That is all. On the face will be a few controls to change the time interval and a display. It will have a MIDI output but no input. I will make a drum machine with a large LED array that will display instrument tracks and an OLED screen for selecting instruments. The last module I sketched was for a single instrument. This kind will be closer to the previous EWC builds because it will utilize pseudo-random note generation, but instead of producing them forever, it will make a loop and ensure the first and last notes don't clash.

If these modules pan out, I have a few more ideas. I may make a General MIDI synthesizer that would accept the MIDI on a serial line, produce audio, convert to USB, save to an SD card, and reproduce stored data. Another device would be a MIDI router that would separate the channels and reduce the load on a single synthesizer.
Faceplate sketches for EWC_Panel devices

The rest of the posts for this project have been arranged by date.
First time here?

Completed projects from year 1
Completed projects from year 2
Completed projects from year 3
Completed projects from year 4
Completed projects from year 5
Completed projects from year 6
Completed projects from year 7
Completed projects from year 8

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2021-08-25

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