Magic Music Visuals

Hey, it's been a while.

I'd like to share my latest Magic-enabled project. It's a hand-made instrument and visualizer called MONARCH that I'm debuting next Saturday at http://www.silencesounds.ca/ gallery in Guelph, Canada.

MONARCH is an idiophonic butterfly-shaped physical synth. Comprised of 38 magnetically-tunable oscillators, 4 kalimba elements, 6 strings, 2 removable steel picks, and a playable reverb spring. Contact mic'd internally with a piezo transducer, it combines the ability to play as a picked/plucked instrument as well as percussively.

I've been exploring instrument making for the past several months, to close the loop with Magic and generate the audio I'm interpreting. Upcoming plans involve winding my own pickups, and building oscillator circuits to combine with the physical oscillators.

Here's a render of the output, as well as some stills and a picture of the physical instrument. The piece in the video is performed by the composer POLLY BEATS, after experimenting with MONARCH for a couple of hours.

Cheers!

Lovely clean visuals and a great reflection of the instrument both visually and in how the visuals match the sound. That looks like 3D butterfly wings and body - very crisp. The butterfly kaleidoscope is an intriguing use of that effect, recreating myriad wings within wings. I hope the arts festival goes well.

Thanks Sadler. I wanted to keep them relatively sparse so there's a nice balance between the performance of the physical object, and the interpretation. So excited to see how people play with it.

Wow! Really great. Especially with the 3D model. Record some video of your show and post it please!

Thanks Eric! I always plan to, never quite seem to get around.

Imaginative and beautiful, in so many dimensions. Great work!

Wow! Especially love the color-play on the butterfly's wings.