As the major project of my Art&Design Foundation course I decided to create a new instrument. The video above shows the finished instrument - an acoustic loop machine.



The concept of the R48 Music Machine was to create an acoustic drum machine. It functions much like those little music boxes you get that play songs like 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' when you turn the handle. On the R48 when you turn the pedals it spins a series of identical gears inside the box. Each gear plays one of 7 instruments: A bass drum, a shaker, 4 kalimbas and a triangle. These gears have 48 slots for pins to be put into to play a note; for example if you wanted to play the shaker at the start of the loop and halfway through you would put a pin in slot 0 and 24 on the shaker's gear. It's these pins that play the instruments by hitting against them. There are 3 different types of pins: acrylic, copper and wood. Each material creates a different sound when it hits the instruments.





This project was more of a way of learning about (and testing my knowledge of) music theory. In total the project lasted 3 months, including all of the brainstorming and prototyping.