spring action
i need to catch up with goodness for more, but i think the key element of this instrument will be all about spring action and measuring it. what i’m looking for in the “playing” of the instrument is the ability to pull on the toy’s corded with some measure of resistance. the further the string is pulled the further along in the sample to play. when the string gets pulled back in the sample could play backwards or just silently reset the postion (i’m leaning towards the latter but it might be nice to have a switch for this).
once i figure out what the mechanics of this motion/movement are i can work on figuring out how to measure the distance and velocity to feed back into my system/computer.
there’s an article about how a real see n’ say works on howstuffworks.com that’s useful. it might not help me ultimately because i want to be able to change the samples and having to swap out phonograph-like discs isn’t practical.
next week i’d like to start hammering out a pull string prototype so i can figure out if it works with the “big idea”. although i’m afraid that i’ll get this lovely mechanical system up and running only to flunk on the software/music side.