So for this paper nature assignment, I had been thinking a little bit about looking around me and taking in exactly where I am at the moment. Well, honestly if I look around, i see a lot of trees, and a lot of barren ones this time of year. But also a lot of fun colours. Lots of reds, yellows, and oranges, in the form of fallen leaves from these trees.
Then I went back and thought, what can i really do with the makey makey toolkit. Realistically it kind of just turns real life conductive objects into simple buttons right? And when hooked up to the Max7 Interface it primarily then plays a sound ( or does an image thing ).
I also happen to really like Jazz music. So what do you get when you put all these things together?
You get a sort of paper tree instrument that plays the chords to a delightful jazz song called “Autumn Leaves”. Thematically its a fall themed nature project. Is there a meaning behind my expression? Well, maybe its just that this time of year I think is a nice time of year to relax and listen to music and watch the leaves and take in the colours. It’s arguably the most beautiful time of year. Or you could say its just a tree piano/instrument/guitar/thing as is artists original intention.
It would work like this:
- Take a brown paper bag
- Cut the top portion into long strips
- Twist the bag into a twisty shape leaving the base wide and the strips untwisted
- twist some strips together to form “branches”
- each branch gets its own piece of aluminum/copper tape (probably copper because colours)
- these will represent chords for the song
- The tape snakes along the twist of the tree to reach the base of the tree in which it will from there connect to the makey makey
- If i’m feeling frisky perhaps you could add a simple jazz drum kit to the bottom as well in the form of leaves but we will see about that
And that’s the easy one two three of what i’m thinking about for the paper tree instrument, Tree Piano. (might do a guitar, since i have one and those chords are easier to record)