Monday: Ideas, Ideas and More Ideas!

One large problem with the MaKey Makey Chord Board was solved today, the annoying re-triggering of the inputs. This definitely made playing the MMCB more difficult than it should have been. If one held the button for too long, the chord would re-trigger many times per second, which was confusing and slowed down the experience of playing the Chord Board itself. 

At first I had thought that the main problem lied within the MaKey MaKey's firmware, so I tried for about an hourd to add some sort of delay into the input state change section of the firmware. There was even a function called "add Delay" but it was of no use. 

It is simple to just tack on a millisecond amount delay within the Arduino firmware, but after repeated failed attempts doing so, it was apparent that the problem lay not within the MaKey MaKey but within Scratch. Since Scratch is controlling the playback of the chords, it must interpret the input it receives from the MaKey MaKey and if so, then Scratch might be able to alter the timing of the triggered chords. 

Enter Dr. Ruthmann, who always seems to find a nice, simple solution. The key consideration was that Scratch was not directly triggering the chord when the button on the MaKey MaKey was pressed, instead each button when received corresponded to a broadcast message, then another block of code received the broadcast and provided the if/then statements to play the chord either in root position or in first or second inversion. Here's the visual. 

In this state, the broadcast is sent continuously when any button is held down. This is the annoying thing I mentioned above. So, how did we get rid of it? Dr. Ruthmann found an elegant solution using only three extra Scratch Blocks. The new command when a key is pressed reads like this, when x key is pressed, broadcast a message, BUT wait until the key is released to send the message. The new code looks like this, very simple. 

Viola, that little addition quieted the re-triggering instantly. Now we just have to paste that into all the other blocks for the other instruments and everything will be all right. 

Now, I mentioned Ideas in the title, there were so many ideas flying around today. Since the MMCB was in a good place as far as prototyping goes, Dr. Ruthmann and I brainstormed for a while about possible new directions for the musically oriented MaKey MaKey as well as possible ways to repurpose the MMCB into a musical kit with multiple projects. 

Three new creatures came out of the brainstorm, the first was a simple piano layout design that would be familiar to people who have some keyboarding experience or who want to gain experience on the keyboard. This would be nice and easy to construct, wither using the tacks currently in use or maybe using strips of metal plated tape to form the piano keys.

The Second new device is really a new instrument, completely different that anything we'd though of making before. This project would be a chromatic-layout melodic instrument. Keeping the same heptagonal pattern as the MMCB, two conductive rings would be added the original pattern widened out a bit. Here's a little mock-up design I put together just now. 

This is cool since the traditional piano layout is again replaced with a much more natural design. Also, the user has the option of hitting the plus and minus semitone buttons at with the tacks on the right side, or the same operation can be done by touching the inner and outer loops around the notes. This means that the user can play a note and pitch shift with one finger! Cool stuff and definitely a promising idea for the MaKey MaKey Music Kit.

The third idea floating around was for a drumkit setup for the MaKey MaKey. At first, this was slated to be the "simple" project, the one that was for the most part plug-and-play from the get-go. It then evolved into something much more in depth and educational. Now, the plan is to have some element of spatial sound representation in the drums themselves. I'd sample the drum kit, mic'ing the instruments with close and far microphone placement. THe samples will be processed into stereo files in order to provide a sense of space when triggered by the user. But, the design goes further. Using the far mic placement samples, we can create two kit sounds, one more direct and the other more ambient. While just plain cool in the first place, this also brings up possible educational applications in the area of critical listening. This could be a very neat way to help musicians, or anybody in learning how to perceive auditory spacial differences. I think this one will be a lot of fun to make and, even better, it gives me another reason to bash on the drum set at home!

That's a lot of stuff all rolled into one day! Now i'm off to the gym and before I know it, Friday will be upon us we'll be off to New York for Music Hack Day!