Parker Heyl

5/11/2016

Final Project write-up: The Desk

Design Goals:
The main concept of the desk instrument
was to make every part large, fun to play,
and tactile. Every midi controller was
designed with an intuitive purpose, and
easy to manipulate without distracting the
player from the keyboard.
The instrument would feature two notecreation methods and five midi controllers.
The keyboard operates normally as one
would expect. The chord buttons operate
similar to an accordion, with preprogrammed buttons that play a chord
automatically. Once a chord type and root
note is selected, a wheel is spun and max
will arpeggiate through the notes of the
chord one by one.
The project features a huge pitch bend bar, inspired by the Dukey Stick by George Duke. Two drawers
control reverb and delay. A full size bicycle wheel controls LFO rate from the speed of rotation.
Some elements of the design goals were not accomplished in time, namely the octave pedals and a filter
frequency controller. There were to be five pedals each corresponding to a different octave, rather and
octave up/down. A squishy ball would be used to control filter frequency. Squeezing the ball would
close the filter on the sound, and releasing the ball would lift the filter.
Parts used:

An old desk
An old bike wheel
Clothesline pulley
1 by 4 wood framing
Scrap wood of various sizes
and 3/16 dowels
Adjustable screen door spring (for the pitch bend bar)
Push Button Switches (30) - Digikey P/N: 450-1644-ND
Distance Sensor (4) - Digikey P/N: 425-2819-ND
Reed Sensor (4) - Digikey P/N: 735-1000-ND

Rotary Potentiometers (16) - Digikey P/N: 987-1277-ND

Piezo Electric Sensor (2) - https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9196
Magnets (20) - Digikey P/N: 469-1069-ND
Arcade Buttons - (10 of blue) + (8 in white) + (6 in black) + (2 in red)
Linear soft POT (1)
Linear slide POT (4)

Construction:
We began with acquiring the desk and guitar wheel, which I found in my basement. Over the break,
Nhu was able to construct our whammy bar, shown below:
We attached the bar on top the desk with a larger
than hole and a wooden dowel. A lever
sticks out the side and uses a linkage to move a
slide pot in relation to the whammy bar motion.
Next, a structure was built to suspend the guitar
wheel beside the desk. It was attached with two
holes as support for the original bike axel.
W designed CAD files for the chord button layout and keyboard. Nhu was able to lasercut the chord
button plate and it worked well (shown below). I began to 3D print piano keys and test them (below).

Next, we worked on the magnet switches for the clothesline pulley and bike wheel. By gluing magnets
around the wheel rim and placing a switch in close proximity, we could trigger the switch at a rate
proportional to wheel speed. Over the next few days, we spent many hours soldering. There were 20
arcade buttons to be made and placed in the
acrlic. There were 24 small push buttons (shown
to the right) which were soldered in palce as
required to match the CAD drawing of the two
octave keyboard. One power and ground was
used for all the buttons, and each signal sent
through strain-releived ribbon wire as shown:

Pulley Wheel

Keybaord
Chord Buttons

To atach the chord pulley wheel (shown to the

left) a 3D printed fixture was made, matching the
pulley housing features. To secure the chord
buttons, two pieces of wood were attached to
the desk survace, which fit snugley into the
acrylic box. The box could then stay secure but
also was not fixed down, for easy access. The
chord buttons were wired through two large
holes drilled in the desk. The keyboard wire was
routed straight back along the desk. The arduino
was mounted on the desk backing in a central
location. One dowel runs through all the keys
to hold them in pace.

Circuits:
Electronic assembly for this project was relitevly straight forward. The keyboard and chord buttons
combined requie 48 digital in. Two more digital ins were used, one for each wheel, plus 7 analog ins.
Running off the arduino we built a power-ground bus, using a lond strip of protoboard. This made it
much easier to connect each sensor to power, but connecting all the signal lines to arduino pins did get
messy. Our analog sensors were simple, they were normal potentiometers working as a voltage divider.
The IR sensors required 5v power, and returned a value on a third signal wire somewhere between 0-5v
that cooresponds to distance. These IR sensors were mounted on the back of two drawers, pointed at
the back of the desk and spaced far enough apart so they would not interfear. The simplicity of the
sensors we ordered meant that no custom electical design was necessary. A very basic understanding of
circuit design was enough to design and construct this instrument.
Max:
Jackson took the lead on programming our max patch. We began by programming the chord arpegiator.
The Akai midi controller was used to test the patch, before any arduino work had begun. Jackson also
designed a simple GUI, so that once the arduino was hooked in, the inputs would be easy to see on
screen. The patch was organized into three sub-patches, one for the keyboard, one for the chords, and
one for the controllers. The keyboard was very straighforward and just required note on and off
commands be sent through to Reason. The desk is unable to detect aftertouch or velocity.
The chord sub-patch required some calculations. We needed to know, based on which notes belonging
to a chord type and the root note, what midi command should be sent Once this relationship was
determined for one key, it is easy to transpose.
Another bit of code converted frequency of on/off signals from the reed switch into speed. This same
code was then used (with different scaling) to control the LFO based upon bike wheel speed.

The remaining sensors (pitchbend, reverb, delay, volume, lead lfo amount, chord lfo amount, and noise)
were simple controller assignemnts. They were converted form a 0-1023 arduino scale to 0-127 midi
scale, and sent to the approriate channel and controller number in Reason.
Reason:
Our instrument controls two different subtractor instruments in the Reason rack. One subtractor is
labeled Chords and produces a bubbly bell-like sound. The other is labled Lead and produces a
synth sound with short attack/decay and a polyphony of one. The LFO can be applied to either of these
sounds depending on the value of two rotatry pots. The LFO for both is a saw tooth wave and controls
filter frequency. The wammy bar only effects the Lead sound and is set to raise the pitch by one
whole step. The Reason rack also included a line mixer module, a decay module, and a reverb module.
The top drawer is linked to reverb on the chords. The lower drawer is linked to delay on the lead. Two
rotatry pots control volume of the two subtractors (lead and chord) on the line mixer. Two other rotary
knobs control the amount of LFO, on chord and lead respectfully. Finally, a rotary knob controls noise
on the lead subtractor module.
Further Deveiopment Goals:
Our desk instrument was in need of many imporvements, and lacks many desirable features:
Improvements:

Wiring the wires connecting to the aruindo are very messy. The wires we used were thick and
unorganized. Using ribon wire could clean this up nicely and make the system less buggy.
Chord arpeggiator rate the pulley wheel controling chord arpegiator rate performs erradically.
The wheel has too much friction and slows down easily, requiring a fast initial speed to get
sustained noise. A better wheel or different software aproach is much needed.
LFO rate the reed switches have a slow response time, and above certain speeds the bike
wheel does not produce usable data. Also, this limits how many magnets can be palced around
the wheel which make the response time to changes in wheel speed delayed.
Keyboard Reliabiltiy Note often slip to the side of the buttons, and bend or twist in an
undesirable way. There are some simple ways to fix this but we did not have time.
Aesthetics - the desk does not look very put together. I would like to hide the wires better, plus
a paintjob could be used to make it look like one coesive instrument rather than a collection of
separate parts.
Better sounds we would like to spend more time developing the Reason sounds so that chords
and lead voices match nicely.

Additions:

Multiple patches as stated above, we would like to improve the voicing of the instrument.
Controls on the desk would shift between patches. Each patch would be a carefully desinged
pairing of chords and lead sound, plus well adjusted reverb, decay, lfo type, filter frequecny, etc.

Octave pedals five pedals on the floor were meant to select from 5 octaves of the keyboard.
Chord wheel octaves a selector for how many octaves of chords to arpegiate through would
be interesting. For example, selecting C major could just cycle though one octave (just the notes
C E G) or it could cycle through 6 octaves of those notes.
More drawers of the 4 drawers on the desk, only two are being used. The long drawer could
be used to control release time of the amplitude envelope on the chords. The remaining drawer
could control attack time.
Filtter Freqeuency ball - we originally planned for a rubber ball which when squeezed and
released would lower and raise the cutoff frequency of a low pass filter, but ran out of time.
Drum looper it would be fun to make a mode of play where each arcade button (20 total)
triggered a different drum sound. We could build a sequencer for creating 16 or 32 bar drum
loops, layering the sounds on top each other one at a time.

With these goals in mind, we began to improve The Desk for our the remainder of our final project.

Further Deveiopment Accomplishments:

Improvements:

Wiring in order to clean up the back end of the desk we switched everything over from stiff,
thick, and individual wires, to ribbon wire which is small and flexible. We also made sure to tape
down all the wires flat against the desk as we went.
In order to simplify the wiring further, multiple power/ground buses were placed evenly
throughout the desk. This was done so that every sensor and button did not need to converge
upon a single power/ground point.

Chord arpeggiator rate a larger and much heavier rubber wheels replaced the clothesline
pulley. The new wheel felt sturdier when spun, and took a much longer time to stop. There
was a noticable improvement to a players control over the arpeggitaor.

Keyboard Reliabiltiy Washer were palced on either end of the keyboard rack, squeezing the
keys together and making them feel more sturdy when played. A support beam was attached
across the top to prevent keys from bending upward in the back when pressed. Some keys
would occasionally miss hit the button below. Flat material was added to the bottom of these
notes to ensure they would trigger the button properly.

Better sounds we spend more time developing the Reason sounds so that chords and lead
voices match nicely.

Additions:

Multiple patches four separate voicing are available with the instrument. One button is used
to toggle betweent them. Each voicing on The Desk consists of a pair of reason modules, one
for lead and one for chords. Max cycles through these pairs (eight moduels total). Next, each
module wasprogrammed to respond in a pleasing way to out sensors. For example, the LFO
wavefrom type and effect it modifies differed between patches, as well as the scaling on filter
frequency, pitch bend amount, etc.

Filtter Freqeuency ball - we originally planned for a rubber ball which when squeezed and
released would lower and raise the cutoff frequency of a low pass filter. However, we were
unable to find a ball we were happy with, and unhappy with the way it felt to play. Instead, a
sensor was palced on top of the pitch bend bar. When this linear soft POT is touched, the
wammy bar sends out filter frequency commands instead of pitch bend.

Drum looper to go along with the four voicings on The Desk, a set of four drum loops was
programmed in. They were created by mixing and matching drum breaks from select songs, and
arranged into 16 bar patterns. A single arcade button is used to shift through the loops.
Pressing once will turn off the current loop. Pressing again will trigger the next.

Volume levels to make mixing and balancing easy, we linked a set of large slide pots to the
volume level on the Reason 16 track mixer. Lead volume and chord volume became easy to
adjust in real time, as well as the level of drum loops. A fourth slide POT controlled LFO amount.