“Turn your melodica into a compressed-air melodica controlled by Max and Arduino. It tries to follow the melodic contour it listens to!
Disclaimer: this project aims at building an inaccurate self-playing melodica. If you want to build an accurate one, use a DC motor with encoder (best option) or a stepper motor. You will at least be able to make it play diatonic (white keys) melodies the right way.
For my project “AI’ve just started to learn to play” I built a robot melodica which listens to fragments taken from YouTube melodica tutorials and tries to reproduce the melody in real time. The robot was active at Incó_ntemporanea Festival in Piacenza, Palazzo Ghizzoni Nasalli, for 24 hours (October 11th, 2020). Four musicians from the local Collettivo_21 were present for the whole 24 hours and jamming/reacting to the robot. Few audience members were allowed in special times of the day, while the whole event was streamed live on the estival’s website and on Twitch. In the following video you can see the robot jamming with the musicians as well as some excerpt from the Twitch streaming.”