The Aeolynth is a synthetic wind instrument. The name combines Aeolus, the Greek god of wind, with “synth”.
How it works
- Touch keys
- Three octaves of capacitive touch buttons made from furniture nails, read by MPR101 capacitive touch sensors.
- Unlike most wind instruments, the Aeolynth can play chords.
- Mouthpiece
- A salvaged clarinet mouthpiece fitted with an Adafruit MPRLS pressure sensor measures how hard the player blows.
- The pressure controls volume, attack and timbre.
- Motion sensor
- An Adafruit BNO055 IMU measures roll, pitch and yaw.
- Moving the instrument controls things like vibrato, glissando and where the sound is placed.
- Microcontroller
- An Adafruit ESP32-S3 Feather reads the keys, the pressure sensor and the IMU.
- It sends the data as Open Sound Control (OSC).
- Sound
- The sound comes from our own sound engine, written in C++ and running on Bela.
- We also use MaxMSP and commercial audio software where they do the job better.
