ITP resident researcher and sound artist Nick Yulman has expanded his Bricolo modular music system to now include melodies. By triggering a solenoid in rapid succession (on the order of microseconds) he can vary its frequency in such a way that the book cover it strikes emits tonal sounds. The result turns an object that would normally be percussive into one that plays melodies.
Nick’s solenoid is controlled with Arduino through MIDI. Although any rugged object would work, the hardcover book is interesting in that the timbre can be changed by flipping the book to different pages. Now you can rock the wah-wah on War and Peace.
