Beat Box is a project that Stefanie Kleinman and I have conceived and are in the process of creating. It takes the idea of musical composition and brings it back into the physical world rather than staring at a computer screen. We decided to use RFID technology and use each tag to turn on and off certain musical loops. There are 4 concave bowls cut out of a wooden block. Underneath the block are 4 RFID readers connected to a arduino and in turn connected to a computer. Below the bowls there are 4 compartments containing 5 quarter sized disks made from vinyl records. Each disk has a RFID tag that triggers either a drum, guitar, bass or synth loop in either GarageBand or another music program when the disk is placed in one of the 4 bowls. There is an different color LED above each bowl that are color coded to each tag to represent the type of loop that will play. When a tag is placed into a bowl the LED will go from dimmed to 100% brightness to indicate that it has been activated. Below are the tech specs for the design.
