I set out to create a music box, kind of. Really, it was more a device that I intended to annoy my roommate with, and one that would cause general discomfort amongst those who used it.
The main inputs I focused on building were potentiometers, a button, and live microphone input. With that in mind, it looked like I needed to use MaxMSP with my Arduino. Realizing Ableton automatically came with it, I was pretty set, and started to experiment with it.
The first difficulty was figuring out how to route signal inputs into MaxMSP. There was a load of translation I had to do with my inputs, and honestly none of it felt concrete at all.
As you can see from the above routing, I went through the port and prepared MaxMSP to receive signal input. After a little bit of trial and error, it worked, and I was getting values.
I ran into a bit of a hiccup when I added the accelerometer function—I was printing 5 values and a button now. Strangely, there was not a concrete solution, but I separated all the values with a space in output and it worked seamlessly. I can’t explain the logic behind it but I do not wish to question it.
After getting the multiple inputs routed, I then had to figure out how to map them in MaxMSP to outputs. I amplified the numbers in the Arduino code to make better to frequencies, and then I figured out how to use the numbers to create a sine wave and to create “harmonies” for the vocal output.
It is hideous, yes, but it works. The vocal harmony was challenging for me to figure out, especially since MaxMSP’s documentation is not that great.
Putting it all together, I had this as an initial prototype.