MU2801 – Making Music with Machines A2020

Angel Barrozo, Bryce Bragdon, Austin Master

The motivation of this design is to offer a way for people to be able to compose a taiko-oriented piece and listen to their works acoustically without a need to hire a professional taiko drummer or be required to play it themselves. Our machine consists of a taiko drum with a frame surrounding it. The top of the frame is a surface which houses the electronics as well as spots for the microcontroller and a computer. Below it is solenoids for the drum head. There are 5 solenoids in total on the machine. 2 of them are contacted the head of the drum, 2 of them are hitting the rim, and 1 is striking the bachi (wooden rod). Each of these positions are common locations used in a taiko drum to create different sounds. Our team wanted to incorporate as many of these unique sounds as we could. To get this system working, we coded in an array to make it more efficient, and so that it can be read in MAX and Ableton Live. Our machine can now be run fully on Ableton, using midi controllers to create a rhythm. Overall, the Taikomotron machine enables the user to create unique taiko drum rhythms and sounds without the need to play it themselves.

Initial Sketch:

Arduino Code: