Earlier this month, we had the chance to visit Maker Faire, held at Ariake GYM-EX in Tokyo. Once again, the event brought together an incredible variety of makers, engineers, artists, hobbyists, and curious minds, all sharing things they had built themselves.
This is easily our favorite event of the year so far! Indeed, Maker Faire sits at the intersection of technology, creativity, sound, and experimentation .In addition, our own procedural audio technologies are a perfect match for most of these embedded projects (ultra-low memory footprint, highly controllable in real-time from sensor data, etc.).
From electronics, robotics, and 3D printing to musical instruments, interactive installations, unusual machines, and completely unexpected DIY creations, Maker Faire always has something that makes you stop and think, “How did they make that?” Here are some audio-related projects that caught our attention (read to the end for some cool robot pics, too)!
PikoPiko Factory
PikoPiko Factory develops electronic musical instruments. They recently built a synthesizer based on an M5Stack CoreS3 (which uses the ESP32 chip) and the AMY sound library. The instrument can simulate the sounds of classic synthesizers such as the JUNO-6 and DX7 sounds, as well as functioning as a sample-based drum machine. It also features MIDI In/Out ports. They even wrote a book about the project, which we bought!
Also based on a M5Stack device, they showcased PikoHachi, a palm-sized rhythm machine, which has the particularity of creating variations of the rhythm when you tilt it. It offers 128 different drum sounds and can be operated intuitively using its touch panel.
Far from limiting themselves to the digital realm, they also presented their Profree-4, an analog synthesizer based on a certain machine from Sequential Circuits…
Kigakudoh
Masahiko Hasebe from Kigakudoh, showcased Loopian::QUBIT, a circular MIDI controller with 96 touch sensors and colorful LEDs, together with software for MIDI live coding and control. More than a gimmick, it was extremely satisfying to play.
One of the great things about Maker Faire is that the builders are always more than happy to talk shop and explain how everything was designed. Some post incredibly detailed instructions online so that you can recreate their projects yourself. Check out this page if you want to build the Loopian::QUBIT controller yourself!
Ayato Maie
Ayato Maie presented a visually stunning synthesizer that represented timbre as 3D shapes evolving in real-time. You could simply select a patch by touching the corresponding 3D shape on the screen. He used the Jetson Orin Nano to do the heavy lifting for the 3D rendering while a Raspberry Pi handled the user interface, etc.
R-MONO Lab
It was great meeting in person the authors of touch:waves, an interactive audiovisual application that turns your bowser into a playful musical instrument. They are members of Roland’s in-house maker group R-MONO Lab.
For this year’s Faire, the team further evolved the project into a Raspberry Pi-based physical enclosure, giving the web app a more tangible, dedicated instrument-like form.
They also presented μPhrase, a very small sampler that can record only one sound at a time, and Pastone 2.0, an electronic percussion instrument using… pasta.
And more!
There were many other audio-related projects, such as LED panels that react to audio, a PC-less DJ/VJ system, a motorized turntable designed for humans and machines to scratch together, an instrument that lets you slap a character’s cheeks from either side to play the drums, etc…
If all that was not quirky enough for you, Yakitori DJ, created by Ryōsuke Ishibashi, lets you DJ by arranging yakitori skewers as if you were grilling them. A camera scans the skewers using machine learning, triggering different sounds and visuals depending on how they are arranged. It was a playful combination of Japanese food culture, computer vision, and electronic music.
Robots, robots, and more robots!
It goes without saying that Maker Faire is the perfect playground for robots of all kinds, one of our favorite hobbies at Tsugi. From desktop bots like StackChan (we have one at the office!) to self-propelled traffic cones or traditional wooden sandals (yes, you read that right), 3-meter mechas, cute droids and an army of R2-D2s (with their electronic entrails on full display), a full menagerie of robots was on show!
All in all, Maker Faire Tokyo was a fantastic experience. What makes the event so special is how open and welcoming it is: families with kids, hobbyists, engineers, artists, etc… can all come together to discover, build, experiment, and share. We are already looking forward to next year!
