Building a playable, recordable, replayable chime instrument for Eaux Claires festival
Building an interactive instrument for a one-of-a-kind festival
Ben Holmen built a custom interactive instrument for the Eaux Claires music festival in his hometown of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The instrument, named Halfmoon Chimes, is a 37-note aluminum chime setup playable via MIDI keyboards. It allows festival attendees to record their performances and receive a unique receipt with a barcode that others can scan to replay the recording. Holmen details the material selection, chime tuning, polishing, custom brackets, and the Raspberry Pi-based control system, plus the design inspiration from Halfmoon Lake.
I would actually build this dream instrument!
- unwind
As someone without musical ear but a healthy respect for makers of instruments of all kinds, this was a great article!
I tend to think that the bar for building e.g. a small synth is like those by mitxela [1], with a tiny microcontroller running C on the metal.
Then the author here uses multi-threaded Python to schedule notes and do millisecond-length powering of 30+ solenoids and make thousands of people feel it's a proper instrument?! Wow!
- poulpy123
I'm wondering how eaux claires is pronounced here
- andai
Wow, well done.
This sound would fit perfectly in the Minecraft OST.