Thereminox Musical Instrument

Situation:

Inspired by the theremin (only instrument that needs no touch to play), I designed and implemented an electronic musical instrument using light sensors. The change of flux (light intensity) due to casted shadows of hand gestures were linked to musical tones to produce melodies.

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Task:

Have you ever wished to make your own electronic instrument? Let's make a light-based, spatial musical instrument that I made up of six coffee cups. Notes are triggered by waving your hands in the air; light levels govern volume and vibrato. A separate note is represented by each cup.

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Action:

The process begins with six photoresistors, one in each cup's bottom. The Arduino Uno collects data from the light sensors and transfers it to the laptop, which then synthesizes sounds using ChucK (a musical programming language developed at Princeton). The physical appearance is crucial to a positive experience. The cups work as great light funnels, therefore their shape does important. Hiding wires makes people focus on the sound.

 

The light sensors are the most fundamental and important component!

 

So, what exactly is a photoresistor, light sensor, or light-dependent resistor?

 

A photoresistor is a particular component whose resistance varies depending on the amount of visible light it receives. A photoresistor may be able to detect oscillations generated by movements as far as a few feet away, depending on the environment.

 

​Sound generation is handled by a ChucK program.

 

If you don't have ChucK installed, you can find instructions for doing so here: http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/release

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​Result:

The results were very satisfactory! The instrument played beautiful tones based on our hand gesture and a video of the same can be found below!