How do I make my own musical instrument?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
March 4, 2018
3 replies
1328 views

Posted on March 04, 2018 at 18:46

I plan on making a compact version of a musical instrument called Mridangam (an Indian musical instrument). The original instrument is pretty huge and there are different variants of it to produce different kinds of sounds. Hence, I want to make a miniature version of it and also want to change the functionality of the instrument from one variant to another by using a switch. I want to be able to control the sound of the instrument based on the force exerted. I plan on using an stm32 microcontroller. Can anyone give me an idea of how i can go about implementing this project? How can I produce the different sounds of this instrument and how to go about doing the signal processing?

#music

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Andrew Neil

Super User

Posted on March 04, 2018 at 23:53

So how on earth have you come to the decision to use an STM32 with absolutely no idea of how your requirements will be achieved?!

:(

You need to take a few steps back, and think about the basic functional blocks that are going to be required for such a project.

Implementation details like choice of an appropriate microcontroller should come much later in the process!

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.

goutham gummAuthor

Associate

Posted on March 07, 2018 at 02:51

Can you please suggest how I can implement this project? I thought I could interface many piezo sensors to the microcontroller and based on the piezo sensor touched, it plays an appropriate note of the musical instrument. But it should play a sound proportional to the force applied.

Andrew Neil

Super User

Posted on March 07, 2018 at 14:04

It's your project - you need to do this!

goutham gumm wrote:

I thought I could interface many piezo sensors to the microcontroller and based on the piezo sensor touched, it plays an appropriate note of the musical instrument.

So the standard approach to any project is to break it down into subsystems, and break them down until you reach something that's simple enough to implement.

Have you tried just implementing a single sensor?

Have you tried just generating sounds - without the sensors?

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.