This MIDI DIY project looks at making a MIDI glockenspiel, aka Quasimodo’s Revenge
The idea was to take a child’s toy xylophone and get the computer to play it. Now I know that the computer is capable of making noises electronically but it is much more interesting to watch an instrument being automatically played. I am sure you have all seen crowds around fair ground steam organs, whereas tapes of the same hardly sell at all.
A child’s toy glockenspiel was fitted with solenoids, driven by MIDI through an Arduino board, using midiO and GarageBand to produce some music by Philip Glass.
Here’s a video of the MIDI glockenspiel in action:
Love it!! Ive always loved using toy sounds like this. I used to use them on the DX7 when I bought one new in ’83 but having a real toy MIDI Glockenspiel.. is the guy going to be selling them??
Thanks, however I did pitch this idea to make Magazine over two years ago and got absolutely no response from them. This is what happens whenever I post an idea to them, this one is certainty not one of my best ideas. There seems to be some sort of reluctance to give new writers a chance.
Mike – seems like make tends to eventually pick up things that get covered by other, more niche, blogs.
Whats multo and mista Graig?
which type (reference) of solenoids do you used ?