Brugia Malayi - Clark Science Center - Smith College

Making the Keyboard Instrument
Freda Moore
As part of my research this summer, I worked mainly on the keyboard instrument (KIns) project. The goal of the project was
to create a viable musical instrument that was free, open-source, simple, able to run on any computer that can run ChucK, and
aimed at a user base that did not otherwise have access to physical musical instruments or formal music instruction. Throughout
its development process, the KIns has provided an interesting look into the difficulties and quirks of making a computer/human
music generating environment.
ChucK, the language that the KIns is written in, is a strongly-timed, concurrent, and on-the-fly audio programming
language, created by Ge Wang and Perry Cook. I wanted to use ChucK to create music, rather than just sounds, and after some
experimentation, I decided that the best way to do this would be to create a program that could be used to naturally create music.
The KIns went through a couple iterations before reaching its current, semi-finished state. It began as a simple program that
mapped sounds to keys on the keyboard, and had only one type of sound. My coworker, Lucy Chikwetu, and I worked together to
create an interface and a wider array of sounds for the KIns. I then worked to create a “looping” feature, in which the user could
record a short sequence of keypresses which the KIns would record and then play back in a loop. This is a technique used by
musicians in live performances (for example, in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2DHHRyt_Bw).
The KIns as a whole was quite a large undertaking, and I did not manage to implement all the features that I wanted.
However, because of the intended open-source nature and the code that I was careful to fully document, it is my hope that others
can add onto the KIns in the future, whether for fun or for learning purposes. (Supported by the National Science Foundation)
Advisor: Judy Franklin
2012
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