Peter Bennett's Ball Bearing Sequencer
Rob Beschizza of Gadget Lab has discovered this lovely sequencer from Peter Bennett that uses steel bearings to trigger beats on each of the four tracks. It's far from the most practical sequencer ever designed, but looks like it would be a joy to play with.
Bennett's project page [Sarc.qub.ac.uk via Gadget Lab]
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Actually, this was featured on technabob on the 13th, and Gadget Lab decided not to credit us as the source for some reason. Boo.
It doesn't work for me... I gotta have MORE COWBELL!
That's pretty dope right there. Now someone's got to take the next step and make a sequencer out of a pachinko machine.
That is definitely the most beautiful looking sequencer I've ever seen.
1) "More Cowbell" is way past its expiration date, which was the day the first person who is not Christopher Walken said it.
2) That doesn't sound anything like a cowbell.
I wonder, does it work simply be detecting an obstruction of light, or is it something specific in the properties of the ball bearing (their shininess, maybe)? Maybe you could just use your fingers to block off the beats - that would be pretty cool, and leave open the possibility of some awesome hand gymnastics!
Think Daft Hands, but they're also controlling the beat...?
Reminds me of a similar installation piece created by Toshio Iwai, but would love to use this as a live tool, certainly an 8 channel x 64 step version.
Regarding the comment about using fingers to block off beats maybe you could use the conductive properties of the ballbearings plus a high resistance to allow your finger to create a capacitance drain, so the beat won't play until you release the ballbearing.
Either way - time to get the breadboard and the arduino out again.
i wonder if you could combine it with Mancala to create some sort of weird rhythmic Mancala-type game. One of the distinctive things to begin with is the sounds the beans/marbles make when the players put them down, so why not add to that?
I think it would be cool!