Category Archives: Arduino

Permanent Prototypes

The ability to define history while it is happening is a rare skill.  For every Democracy in America (de Tocqueville, 1835/1840) that gets it right, there is a Coming of Age in Samoa (Mead, 1928) that gets it wrong.  We … Continue reading

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Arduino and Midi for Beginners

This is a brief introduction to the Arduino, MIDI, and how the Arduino can be used to communicate musical messages. This guide is not a tutorial. This guide provides a quick, concise explanation of these technologies and links to some … Continue reading

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