Connected Devices (working title)

Documenting the development of a modular mechanical musical instrument; created by Graham Dunning and Sam Underwood.

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Getting there. Now to make some actual music with it, ahead of Saturday’s performance!

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Rehoused our drive shaft motor controls, so that we don’t have to drag a treadmill fascia around with us :)

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Debut!

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Cam designs

The rhythm module is coming along! Here’s a little snippet playing a randomly put together rhythm on some junk drums from Sam’s garden:

A post shared by Graham Dunning (@grahamdunning) on Apr 20, 2018 at 12:20pm PDT

One of the main things I wanted to build into this was the option to have interchangeable rhythms, to be able to alter patterns on the fly and for it to be quite clear visually what was going on. This is the reason for the big cog wheels having an open face, rather than being clamped in place on both sides - to be able to add or remove different shaped cams.

The initial cams were laser cut. I went with a hexagonal central hole to enable them the be interchanged. Soon realised that this would mean all subsequent cams would need to be laser cut too, it would be too difficult / time consuming to cut hexagonal holes with normal workshop tools.

The new design was to use a simple shape made of two circles, drilled with a normal pillar drill. 

I like the idea of using fairly random or unusual shapes for the cams, so tested a few of those out. Also realising that the rounded cams might not be as effective as more angular or pointed ones.

The square and triangle ones worked the best in the end, at this slightly wonky stage in the build,  generating a more predictable rhythm is more encouraging. I was quite pleased with my GCSE level geometry skills, managing to draw an equilateral triangle and locate its centre, using compass and ruler.

This square is a bit neater -- once we’d got the correct size drill bits it was much easier to get the central hole more accurate. Finally tested out some squares with their corners cut off, which are the cams used in the video at the top.

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Blower module

I’ve been steadily building a blower box for our contraption. The plan is for it to have two sets of accordion bellows, driven by a wheel...as all the modules are.

Something along these lines but I have decided to pivot the bellows rather than try to pull them straight up and down.

I am getting there but I am learning on the job a bit so that’s slowing things down.

As you can see I currently have only one hole for the output of air...and one set of bellows for now. At present that pumps air out when the bellows is compressed. Rhythmical puffs. The plan is to use a valve between the two chambers inside. Hopefully that will give 2x rhythmical puffers when closed and 1x drone puffer when open. Realistic?

I am unfamiliar with windchest design so any comments welcome!

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Quick video of our improved test drive shaft. Horizontal pillar drill for power. What should we use? Needs to be pretty beefy/torque-y, fairly quiet and ideally variable speed off the peg :)

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Some early prototypes of a section of the rhythm module. The idea is to have several of these on the same unit, each playing a different percussive instrument.

Key features: – interchangeable cams to allow different rhythms – ability to disconnect from main drive to allow changing of cams, or pause in rhythm drive.

Things to change: – friction wheel potentially slipping, so change out for toothed cogs – beaters would ideally be interchangeable also – arm for disconnecting wheel may need to change position (see illustration)

Also shown, some inkscape diagramming/shapes for laser cutting.

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Horniman research period

The Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, London, has long been a source of fascination for me. As part of this project I enquired as to whether we could carry out research there; both delving into their musical instrument collection and the related resources in their library. Alongside the many physical objects on show they have many others catalogued / in their wider collection. They also have a wonderful selection of musical instrument books, documenting historical and present day musical instruments from around the world. They very kindly offered us access to these resources. This period provided some very useful insights and points of discussion for the design of our instrument.

Alongside the instruments in the collection, we found the most enlightening books for our purposes to be the patent books. In particular the books covering patents for "Musical Instruments, Automatic", from the early 20th century. I guess it sums up our project quite well to say that the newer of these patent books (circa 1920) held less interest for us as it contained more in the way of electro-mechanical devices, as these became prevalent. 

We would debrief each day following our time in the Horniman library.

This period led to many useful developments in our understanding of what it is each of us would like to get from the project and how best to approach various aspects of it; as well as providing some remarkable insights into the contraptions people have been making for 100s of years...

We would like to thank Margaret, Mimi and Henry at the Horniman for their support in facilitating this research period. You rock! 

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An introduction

Welcome to the first post on a blog set up to document a new collaboration between artists Graham Dunning and Sam Underwood. Even starting this blog post poses some issues. "Connected Devices" is a working title that we have yet to replace. We welcome suggestions from anyone who reads this and thinks of an alternative.

What is it?

This project centres on the creation of a new modular, mechanical musical instrument. Initially it is intended to be a live performance instrument for two players but it is also designed with use as an installation piece in mind. 

This is an acoustic instrument, with multiple modules introduced to a central drive system over the course of a performance. They will stay in sync based on our use of a single drive shaft across all modules. The drive shaft can be powered either by an electric motor or manually with a hand-crank.

After months of discussion and scribbling, we have started this project by creating a series of prototypes to test some of the ideas behind the different modules and the drive system.

At this stage we are planning to use a wheelchair motor and bicycle wheels / tyres to couple to the shaft using friction. This probably represents the greatest area of concern for us as we are unclear what load this will manage to keep in time. Will the wheels slip when we add more modules? Will the motor cope etc?

Outcomes

We hope to make an instrument / system capable of being used for live performance, recording and as an installation piece. We will soon announce our debut performance at a UK festival and a collaborative cassette release. A fine start and it imposes an immovable deadline! More on all that soon...

ACE funding, ace!

Doing this sort of work requires many stages of testing. Much of this needs to be done collaboratively and often involves testing a number of options before a suitable approach is arrived at. This is a costly process on many levels, so it brings us great pleasure to announce that the Arts Council have backed this project through their Grants For Arts funding strand. It’s hard to overstate how helpful this is. We can now develop the project properly from the start. In fact, we have also received a bit of corporate funding for this project and the support of a number of key arts organisations. We are very grateful!

Your thoughts...

We welcome your thoughts on what we are making. Maybe we missed something? Why are you building it like that? Or what about a module that does X? Please send us an email with any words of wisdom.

Thank you for reading. Keep an eye on this blog for further updates on the project...