RFID Beat Box

The RFID Beat Box is a instrument that allows a user to create and play music by placing RFID tags into wooden bowls. The tags, designed as small vinyl record discs, are labeled by color and each tag/disc activates a unique sound. The top of the instrument has four wooden bowls, each labelled by color to indicate a certain instrument/musical type (drums, guitar, bass and synth loops). The user can place the tags/discs into the bowls to layer and experiment with the different musical options. We also incorporated colored LEDs that blink to the music when a disc is placed into the each bowl.

Musical Bouncing Balls

For my Intro to Computer Media midterm I wanted to do something with collision detection and audio. With this as my general goal I started playing around with bouncing balls and turned that into a drum machine like application. Whenever a ball crosses the center point of the screen 1 of 10 audio tracks will play depending on where the ball crosses along the x-axis of the center point. You can click to add more balls to the mix and create beats. I also tried to program the arrow keys to control the speed or tempo of the balls, although I did not succeed with that I accidentally figured out how to turn gravity on with the right arrow, pause everything with the down arrow, flip gravity with the left arrow and turn off gravity with the up arrow. Gotta love happy accidents. Below is a link to a javascript version of the application along with two version of the application for download, the first is more rhythmic and the second is more abstract and random. Enjoy!

Musical Bouncing Balls – JavaScript

Musical Bouncing Balls – Rhythmic Download

Musical Bouncing Balls – Random Download

Pixelled First Day of School

So for our week 1 homework assignment for ICM we were asked to create a purdy picture using processing (java). The same day I was assigned this my sister sent my a picture of my nieces on their first day of school and I used this picture as inspiration since for one it was adorable and two I could totally relate to the excitement of starting school. See the original picture below. And to view the javascript page click here.

Intro to Computer Media
Matt Parker
Week 1 Homework