Jaclyn Saik – Looking Outwards -11

Changxi Zheng is a professor at Columbia University who leads a team of researchers looking at ways to use computers to modify the sound of existing acoustic instruments.
One project that really caught my eye is called “zoolophone.” Zheng and his team studied the ways that professional tuners adjust glockenspiel keys–by digging into the material and making divits that allow it to vibrate at the exact desired frequency. Zheng looked into the ways that computers could make this process easier, and discovered that by modeling this same interaction on a computer, they could calculate the exact vibration that the keys would make based on their shape. In this way, he was able to manipulate the shape of the keys, something that isn’t done usually with traditionally made instruments since it’s hard enough to tune rectangular shapes.

(video caption): The metallophone contact sounds is a project the team worked on to manipulate different within set algorithms in order to maintain a certain tone.

This allowed his team to have more fun with the shapes, too. He wrote a program that asks the computer o start with a certain shape, such as a t-rex, and then text vibrations against it and manipulate it’s form slightly until it makes the right particular sound they were looking for.
I found this very interesting because I am always interested in tools that designers make in order to educate children, and this seems like a useful tool for teaching about different notes.