Electric Kalimba

"promotes engagement in the exploration and production of meaning"

Project Overview:

The brief for this project was to pick a field within critical design from a list of options as well as to incorporate the use of arduino and CNC routed dibond. I picked to pursue Ludic design, which "promotes engagement in the exploration and production of meaning".

I knew I wanted to pursue making a musical instrument and started with analyzing different types of instruments: strings, percussive, melodic. I began to explore the function of an analog electric piano by Wurlitzer. I found that the mechanics of these pianos was very complicated to replicate with my current resources and allotted time.

I began to research a much more simple instrument, the kalimba.

I posted a detailed instructional article to github as well: https://github.com/dvalouiski/Electric-Kalimba

Process:

While exploring the mechanics of a kalimba I began to come up with a very new format for it, employing the use of a piano-like key arrangement, piezo pickups for amplification, and effect knobs.

Shown above is a flowchart of how the signal from the user can be amplified. First a key on the instrument if physically activated through touch, the piezo converts the sound into an electrical signal which then brings the information to the arduino where the sound is modulated on the knobs, and finally it is amplified!

For the arduino component I was working from a tutorial on instructables.

Here is the first prototype. At this point the decision was made to have the blue foam component made from solid mahogany for amplification/resonance. The white foam core represents the second material, dibond, a sheet of ABS sandwiched between two sheets of aluminium. This was to be CNC routed with the use of illustrator to plan out the cutting paths