An instrument for playing against a drone on a map of pure, whole-number intervals, with Apple Pencil, keyboard or mouse. Version 3.0 is a complete rebuild.
Aetherfield Air: your AirGradient monitor on iPad and iPhone
An app that reads AirGradient air-quality monitors straight over your own Wi-Fi and keeps a year of history. No account, no subscription, nothing sent anywhere.
A virtual penny whistle, played from a WARBL (preview)
A physical model of a real penny whistle, played live from a WARBL wind controller. The first day of playing it, and what still needs work.
An air quality screen for the Seattle Makers spray room
A Raspberry Pi and a small touchscreen that show a week of the spray room’s air at a glance, so a spray session shows up even after the air has cleared.
A filament weigh station for Seattle Makers
An NFC scale that knows every spool of 3D-printer filament in the lab: what it is, how much is left, and when to reorder.
A Glass Bead Game
This app is now Glass Bead Game III. Version 3.0 is a complete rebuild (read about it); the manual covers everything below and much more. This page describes the original 2024 version. An app for visualizing consonance and dissonance Download: iPad and Mac app via the Apple Store The main screen of “A Glass Bead Game” The graph Each axis of the graph above represents the frequency of a musical tone across the span of two and a half octaves. The tick-marks along these axes represent one semitone of pitch change, and note names representing a diatonic scale in C is added for reference. ...
Court Musette, late 17th Century
Contents of this page copyright 1999, 2021, by Norm Sohl Chanter, Stocks, Small chanter I had a chance to briefly study this instrument in 1999 when it was in the possession of a friend. I don’t know its current whereabouts. It is made of Ivory, well turned as you would expect from an instrument made for a wealthy client. and probably dates to the late 1600s. I was able to make several x-rays of the instrument with the help of a friendly local chiropractor, and these are included below. These x-rays showed several interesting things about this instrument is that visual inspection did not: ...
Renaissance 3-Hole Pipes
The three hole pipe is an ancient instrument, dating back to bone flutes found in the Neolithic. It has been popular throughout Europe and parts of the Americas as a dance instrument since it can be played with just one hand, leaving the other hand free to play a percussion instrument – a drum, a string drone, a triangle. On this page I’ve collected notes and sources I’ve used to make reconstructions of 3 hole pipes from renaissance Europe. We are particularly fortunate in that there are written sources, iconographical sources, and surviving instruments from this period – meaning that very little guesswork is needed to create working modern instruments. ...
Momma told me there’d be days like this
A great piece of stained glass from St. Marks in Venice. The flaming chariot?
An Atlas of Consonance
What makes two or more musical notes sound good (or bad) when sounded together? A music teacher can tell you how notes can be combined to sound good; that is what music theory is all about. It is harder to talk about why we perceive those combinations to be satisfying, but that discussion can lead to new and innovative methods for composition and performance. Background This paper was first published in 1986 in the journal 1/1. I have revised it several times, added more graphics, and have written a couple of interactive programs to let you hear the intervals and chords discussed here. I’ve added some introductory material as well–many musicians have not had the time to study musical acoustics, and the same can be said for many acousticians and the study of music. For further reading there is a considerable library of good reference works on musical acoustics, especially “Horns, Strings, and Harmony” and “Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics“, both by Benade. ...