#2

This sounds like it will be an ace project for me and most of my soundlcoud followers! :laughing:

2 Likes
#3

Ha! Good one. Yeah, a shout out to all the bots in the house.

1 Like
#4

The project is now live.

#5

I picked the tweet which instructed the following:

“An instrument made out of spinning wheels and thin paper”

There was something about this that immediately suggested a kinetic, playful kind of action. I dug out a box of assorted Lego, located some wheels and cut up some narrow strips of paper. The ridiculous looking thing you see in the image was the outcome. I stuck the bits of paper on upturned Lego wagon wheels and positioned them in close proximity so that they would brush against each as they spun. I first attempted blowing on them, and though they turned in kind, it wasn’t quite the effect I was after. I found that my spinning one of the wheels with my index finger was much more effective and it resulted in an interesting fluttering effect. I recorded three takes of this action to build up a bit of texture. A little EQ has been applied along with spatialising the three tracks.

I’ve dubbed it the Hess Flutter Machine. A nod to the sound artist, Felix Hess who’s made all kinds of lovely kinetic sound sculptures over the years. I’m especially fond of the ones he’s made with paper. An avatar for Hess himself can be seen standing next to the machine, dutifully manning the crankshaft whilst responsibly donning hearing protection. It’s quite a maelstrom going on there!

8FB2A62C-E88D-4723-9071-79D3720F86B4 2
8FB2A62C-E88D-4723-9071-79D3720F86B4 22732×2732 1.5 MB

IMG_8611
IMG_86113024×3024 1.57 MB

8 Likes
#6

I choose Oceangraphic data and satellite instrument suggestion. I used a MAX for live EQ I built to tune the programing from the Roland DJ 808 and a drum kit played on the Push2 in a loop. I considered the EQ the satellite and I tried to tune to shaped on the NOAA MAPS. This is a link to the compressed text for the MAX device. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1akvdj1xZAjntoTIQVoMH537TteK4wcecnbgx8XuuGkI/edit?usp=sharing

3 Likes
#7

Hi Everyone!

My 3 were, an instrument made out of:
walnut shells and an imperfectly trained chicken
poppy seedheads and a 200-foot drop
ultrasonic range finders and a ghost detector

Great fun!

Have a great week!

Darren :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#8

Ice melts inside a kettle recorded by hydrophone to degraded magnetic tape. The Slinkiephone (big spring) will stop at nothing to disturb the ambience.

My instrument bot ingredients are ice, big springs and degraded magnetic tape.

3 Likes
#9

the bot suggested i use bamboo skewers and sewer pipes

the closest samples i had to hand were bamboo chimes and boiler pipes

these were played through iris 2

2 Likes
#10

hi, is there a way of participating that doesn’t require the use of twitter of fakebook ??

1 Like
#11

Hi, you don’t need a twitter account to read the instrument bot’s tweets for this project. I don’t have one either. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#12

Hey All, I used the good side internet and went to freesound to construct my instruments. I am not really into twittering but this was a cool idea. Hope all are well and I will spare y’all the rant I want to go on. Happy Independence Day 'murica!

Peace, Hugh

5 Likes
#13

Hi. There’s no Facebook involved. If you don’t wanna check out the Twitter feed, I can select a couple cues for you at random. Just lemme know.

#14

Fun challenge!

This small piece is composed of 24 samples of ping-pong balls (created a while ago, for another project), bouncing off of different materials. Also added to the mix, are samples of Explosions from old Amiga games - all in all, combined to create “an Instrument of ping-pong balls and tiny explosions” as suggested by the InstrumentBot


A few extra touches added, mainly mangling by the new iZotope Stutter 2 VST.

(oh, and thank you all and especially Mark for this community
 just wanted to get that out :smile: )

6 Likes
#15

I started off with a jazz melody that was generated from a bunch of other jazz melodies by an LSTM Network I wrote in Python. That created a MIDI file. I then went on Freesound.org and found sound samples that were similar to three InstrumentBot tweets. I dragged each sample on to Simpler in Ableton Live with each in its own track. The MIDI file was the input for each of these tracks. I slowed the tempi on the tracks way down so that more of each sample would be played.

Here is information on each of the three InstrumentBot tweets and the corresponding Freesound samples.

an instrument made out of thimbles and gelatin

Washboard » Washboard.wav

an instrument made out of chandelier prisms and a tin box

Sonidos animaciom » 36.Chandelier_trembling.wav

an instrument made out of fishing line and a modified See 'n Say

the cow says.wav

4 Likes
#16

As I looked over the Bot’s tweets, I took in the repetition of terms and started to formulate an idea.

Language like “tiny explosions” and “metronome” led me to think about recording drums, while the metallic descriptions reminded me that I’d been meaning to record various things in town.

6 Likes
#17

And the playlist is rolling:

1 Like
#18

Track Notes:
I used a random number generator to pick two tweets at random, and got the following:

  1. an instrument made out of knitting instructions and array of bug zappers
  2. an instrument made out of fishing line and a modified See 'N Say

I collected a few short samples of bug zappers, a See 'N Say, and recorded short strumming patterns on a fishing line strung over a board between two nails. The samples were loaded into a Radio Music eurorack module.

I converted the first knitting pattern I found on google images (called ‘Flying Geese’ - there is a link on my soundcloud) to gates and control voltage - I used an arbitrary method to do so: knit = gate, purl = no gate and since the pattern at the bottom right of the image had a sort of ‘bar chart’ look I split it down the middle and converted these to 24 steps of control voltage (one box = 10v/6 = 1.66v, two boxes = 3.33v, etc). I then programmed the gates and control voltage into a sequencer to trigger the samples and modulate the station and start parameters of radio music to create a granular loop for each sample source. The gates and control voltages were also used to modulate the parameters of mutable instruments clouds and chronoblob 2 delay. I had added a simple four step sequence to form a leading melody for the strummed fishing line and I played with attenuation of the control voltage until I was happy with the results. Each loop was recorded to cassette and a simple arrangement of the loops made in ableton. The exported stereo track was once again passed through clouds and chronoblob for further granulation, this time with the modulated parameters augmented live by me, before being recorded to cassette.

4 Likes
#20

https://soundcloud.com/ohm-research/tenn-disquiet0444

A recording of an instrument made of ball bearings and a tin can.

1 Like
#21

“An instrument made out of chess algorithms and a fog machine.”

I screenshot the TryMove method from Apple’s open source Chess application’s MBCMoveGenerator class and passed it through Photosounder to create a 116 bpm audio file. I then duplicated it and sent one copy through a bitcrusher and the other pitched down an octave. A little bit of automated Blackhole reverb was brought in later in the track.

In another track I added a public domain fog-horn noise and grouped it with the other two tracks. The group was then sent through a filter with automation on the cutoff and resonance to simulate fogginess.

4 Likes
#22

For this track, I used the prompt, “An instrument made out of rain and dirt.”

Field recordings by me:

Rain
Footsteps walking on a dirt track

Field recording by andersmmg (freesound.org/people/andersmmg/)::slight_smile:

Shovel in dirt

4 Likes