Donimo Music

INTERACTIVE SOUND STUDIO
DOMINO MUSIC

Students: Bochen Wei (307132668)
Yurong Xia (308144880)

1. Introduction
The project is about creating a musical instrument that combines with playing dominos game and creating interactive sound together. The project is called “domino music”, that is an interactive sound game project. The sound or music is being created when player plays the dominos. Player can achieve pleasure and satisfaction by variety forms of setting up the dominos. Although the domino music is a simple sound instrument, it is possible to create melody with understanding of regular system. The purpose of the project is to give some ideas to improve the creativity and interactivity of toys or physical objects. The intended user can improve their imagination with digital techniques.

2. Influential works
Domino Music was inspired by playing domino game itself. However, we would like to combine playing dominos and creating interactive sound together. Making playing dominos is more interesting, creative and interactive.

3. Intended user experience
The intended users of the domino music are to face to masses and public from different ages and different countries. The domino music could be initiatory game of music for children. It also could be a simple instrument for adults to be relaxed in their leisure time. Different cultures and different countries’ people also can enjoy with it because it only involves domino game and sound or music. In addition, if the users who have some sounds knowledge, they are also able to create varies short melodies when they are playing this game. The domino music project also provides the feature of interesting for the people who have not musical knowledge, that they still achieve the satisfaction by the musical dominos.

4. Design motivation
The original idea comes from my working experience. I work in a toy warehouse as a packer. I pack more than one hundred different kinds of toys such as trucks, planes, and sailboats etc every week, and some planes, which are more than 1.5 meters length, are really big and look very cool. However, most of those toys are just remote control toys. From my point of view, they are lack of interactivity and creativity to players. So, I would like to combine creating interactive sound and playing toys together and make toys to be more interactive and creative to players. Initially, I had two ideas one is playing a helicopter and another one is playing dominos. Finally, after discussing with my partner, we decide to choose dominos to fulfill our idea. This is because playing a remote control helicopter is not very easy and need large space.

5. Technical method

Hardware requirement
For this project, the hardware requirement is not hard to be achieved. We just need a rectangle table and bind a “T” shape frame, which is used for hanging webcam, on one table leg. The webcam should be above the table face vertically and look at the table face. We also need a small mat, this is used for reduce noise when players knock down dominos. This is also why we cannot put webcam under the table. If we put webcam under the table, we need a glass table face. However, knocking down dominos on glass surface is very noise. We use 48 dominos in our project, and we divide them into 8 groups. Each group has an unique color and function.


Software requirement
We use MAX and reacTIVision to create this project. Firstly, “Max is a graphical music programming environment for people who have hit the limits of the usual sequencer and voicing programs for MIDI equipment.” (Miller Puckette, Max reference manual, 1988). So, we do all the programming work in MAX. Secondly, reacTIVision is an open source, which can be used in cross-platform, and tracks of fiducial markers attached onto physical objects, as well as for multi-touch finger tracking. In our project, we just use the tracking fiducial markers function. So, we attach 48 markers (from ID 0 to ID 47) on 48 dominos. Each domino matches one unique ID number.

Programming
We build two patchers for our project. One is used for getting the ID, which we want only from camera, and another one is used for generating sound by different ID. In the first patcher (See figure TuioClient), we want to get four kinds of ID, namely, general ID, ID=0 only, ID=45 only, and ID from 22-28 only. The ID 0 and ID 45 are also tracked position X and position Y, which can be further used.

(Figure: TuioClient)

The second patcher includes two parts namely playing MIDI notes and playing sound (See figure Playingnotes, Playingsound). From ID 1 to ID 21 are used for generating single MIDI notes, which means that camera sees one ID once then generate one MIDI note once. From ID 22 TO ID 28 are used for generating continuously MIDI notes, which means if players shake a domino a little bit, it will continuously generate the same MIDI notes. So, generating single MIDI notes is based on adding a domino under camera view, and generating continuously MIDI notes is based on update the info of a domino even if just lightly shaking. The position X of domino 0 is used for controlling the different timbres of sound. We give players 20 timbres of sound. So, players can choose the timbre they want by changing the position X of domino 0. The position Y of domino 0 is used for controlling the velocity of MIDI note. So, players can adjust the velocity by changing the position Y of domino 0.

(Figure: Playingnotes)

In the playing sound part, we use 15 buffers to store 15 different sounds, namely 5 drum sounds, 5 guitar sounds and 5 mix sounds, and then matching an ID to one sound. Furthermore, we use the position X of domino 45 to control the speed of all the sound at the same time and position Y of domino 45 to control the volume of all the sound at the same time. This means players cannot change speed and volume individually. If they change speed and volume, they change the speed and volume of all the sound. The domino 46 is used for changing all the sound back to normal speed. This is because sometime changing speed of sounds could make noise. Finally, domino 47 is used for stop all the sounds. So, when the players do something wrong or make too much noise, they can use domino 47 to stop all the sound quickly.

(Figure: Playingsound)

6. Resources/references
http://reactable.iua.upf.edu/?software
http://cycling74.com/twiki/bin/view/ResourceGuide/InterestingWork
http://cycling74.com/products/max5