{"id":16328,"date":"2017-02-02T16:51:50","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T15:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.recantha.co.uk\/blog\/?p=16328"},"modified":"2017-02-02T16:53:04","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T15:53:04","slug":"microbit-sequencer-using-a-raspberry-pi-for-sound-synthesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.recantha.co.uk\/blog\/?p=16328","title":{"rendered":"micro:bit sequencer using a Raspberry Pi for sound synthesis"},"content":{"rendered":"

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David Whale (@whaleygeek<\/a>), who some of you will know (he goes to a\u00a0lot<\/em> of events and does loads<\/em> of outreach work, especially with micro:bit and the IET, and also runs\u00a0a Raspberry Pi club in Harlow) and\u00a0Jonny Austin, CTO of the micro:bit Foundation<\/a>, have done an excellent project to show the micro:bit and the Raspberry Pi working together. They’ve built a rotunda, called a Tone Matrix, of 40 micro:bits representing a musical scale with each of 8 columns representing groups of notes on a pentatonic scale.<\/p>\n

As the micro:bits are switched on, they communicate wirelessly with another micro:bit which is attached to a Raspberry Pi. The Pi then interprets which micro:bit(s) in the matrix are switched on and plays tones according to their positions. The whole thing then plays the notes in a loop, using Pygame for the individual ‘notes’ control. It is even possible to play a chord by turning on several micro:bits in a column.<\/p>\n

I spoke to David about the project, and he explained it in-depth and told me that most of the actual computational work is done by the Pi – the micro:bits are essentially used as controllers.<\/p>\n

Jonny and I never met while working on this. We collaborated via Skype and Github the whole way. I tested the Pi code on a train and Jonny wrote the micro:bit code on a plane.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The laser-cut frame for the instrument was created at Cambridge Makespace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can see a video of it in action, at Bett, below<\/a> (it runs from the beginning to about 3:45) and a slightly closer-up video of it via Twitter here<\/a>. You can see all the code on Github here<\/a>.<\/p>\n