Author Archives: Elliot Inman

Four Four Time @ CDI

An interactive, collaborative constellation of four MIDI sequencers, each of which can play four notes in its own time with variable pitches, note lengths, and tempos. Participants can join in the real time creation of complex musical patterns working at … Continue reading

Posted in Arduino, Experimental Music, MIDI | Comments Off on Four Four Time @ CDI

Circuit Bending for Beginners

Because unmaking something is a great way to make something new. Circuit Bending for Beginners Unmake a musical keyboard and discover how plastic parts connect with electronic circuits to make music. See how the piano keyboard actually works, how a … Continue reading

Posted in Circuit Bending, Circuits, Workshops | Comments Off on Circuit Bending for Beginners

Musical Circuits Goes to Moogfest 2017

Posted in Circuits, Moogfest, Workshops | Comments Off on Musical Circuits Goes to Moogfest 2017

A Postmodern Drum Machine

“How does time function in postmodern music?  Postmodernism is profoundly temporal, but it uses, rather than submits to time.  Its music shapes time, manipulates time.  Time, like tonal sounds and diatonic tunes and rhythmic regularity and textual unity, becomes no … Continue reading

Posted in Arduino, Drum Machine, Experimental Music, Postmodernism | Comments Off on A Postmodern Drum Machine

Silence, Chance, Cage, Code

“Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard.”  ~ Stéphane Mallarmé, 1897 John Cage is well known as the composer who formalized the use of silence as a compositional element on par with any other note or sound.  He was … Continue reading

Posted in Experimental Music, John Cage, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Silence, Chance, Cage, Code

Musical Circuits @ KNOBCON 2016

Experimental Music: Composition with an Arduino MIDI Controller Knobcon  Chicagoland, September 2016 With an Arduino, a breadboard, and a handful of parts, you can build a MIDI controller that works as a sequencer or a classic beatbox. But the same … Continue reading

Posted in Arduino, Circuits, CODE, Experimental Music, MIDI | Comments Off on Musical Circuits @ KNOBCON 2016

Musical Circuits at UNC

Posted in Circuits, Experimental Music, Uncategorized, Workshops | Comments Off on Musical Circuits at UNC

Binary Beethoven: Coding a Musical Idea

The first four ominous notes of the Fifth Symphony are well known:  da-da-da-dum!   That musical idea seems so obvious now, but think just for a moment about how radical it was and is.  First, this is a symphony that doesn’t … Continue reading

Posted in Arduino, CODE | Comments Off on Binary Beethoven: Coding a Musical Idea

A Musical Stylus for the World’s Simplest Oscillator

“Rule #17: If it sounds good and doesn’t smoke, don’t worry if you don’t understand it.” ~ Nicholas Collins, Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking, Second Edition, Routledge, 2009, p. 144. Collins describes it as the “world’s simplest … Continue reading

Posted in Circuits, Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments Off on A Musical Stylus for the World’s Simplest Oscillator

Arduino MIDI Circuits

“What really makes an instrument musical is that a musician decides to make use of it.”  ~  Allen Strange, Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques, and Controls (2nd Edition, 1983, p. 2). This post documents two circuits connecting an Arduino to electronic … Continue reading

Posted in Arduino, CODE, MIDI | Comments Off on Arduino MIDI Circuits