Close

12/16 - 12/22

A project log for Bot-thoven: A Robot Musician

Designing a Servo Motor Based Mallet System to Generate Musical Expression in Instrument Playing Robots

jason-pJason P. 12/19/2019 at 14:570 Comments

Plan

I will need to take the musical elements I’ve been able to add to my code and test it on new musical passages. 

Procedures

I used the code I had written last week to hit a xylophone key with different musical expressions and tested it on a new musical passage.  

Progress

I was able to add an additional servo-mallet system to run with my servo driver. This allowed me to experiment with three-note tunes like Mary Had a Little Lamb. 

A video can be found here where my robot is playing Mary Had a Little Lamb with a mix of single notes and chords (two notes at once). The passage is played three times, with the articulation changing from a lot of ringing to a muted sound, the tempo (speed) getting slower, and the dynamics becoming softer.

Problems

I will now need to build more servo-mallet systems so that I can test my code with more keys (and therefore play more interesting musical passages), as well as try using a rubber band to fasten the mallet on to the servo horn instead of a zip tie. 

Discussions