Week 9: Creating an Instrument

As a singer, one of the things I struggle with is finding nice harmonies, as I am really new at that. That’s what inspired me to create an instrument where you can pick a note, and fine the Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass notes for it.

I decided to go for a range of notes that was close to my vocal range, so I went for 15 notes, from D3 to A5. I set up 4 buttons, one resembling each note, soprano being the original melody. The goal was to use the Potentiometer to pick a note, listen to it with the red button (soprano), and then find the 4 part harmony with the other buttons. In the end I should be able to press all four, and hear the harmony.

I mapped the analogue to match the notes I wanted to use, and each button just jumped a few notes from the original, to be a harmony. I only went through a few hours of debugging and creating this, but when I finished I encountered an obstacle i didn’t know how to fix. My sound was very muffled. When I would only have 1 button in use in the code, the sound would be fine. When I tried the code one button at a time, each button worked perfectly. But when I put it together, the sound sounded muffled, laggy, and muddy. The notes also didn’t come outright. At first I realised i had the resistor in the wrong place in some buttons, so when I fixed that it helped, but the issue didnt seem to go away anymore. Im not sure if this is an issue with the button being so small, or not.

#include "pitches.h"
int knob = A0;
int soprano = 11;
int alto = 10;
int tenor = 9;
int bass = 8;

int notes [15] = {NOTE_D3 , NOTE_E3 , NOTE_F3 , NOTE_G3 , NOTE_A4 , NOTE_B4 , NOTE_C4 , NOTE_D4 , NOTE_E4 , NOTE_F4 , NOTE_G4 , NOTE_A5};
//int whichNote = 0;

void setup() {
  pinMode(soprano, INPUT);
  pinMode(alto, INPUT);
  pinMode(tenor, INPUT);
  pinMode(bass, INPUT);
  Serial.begin(9600);
  // put your setup code here, to run once:
}

void loop() {

// put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
int knobValue = analogRead(knob);
int sopranoState = digitalRead(soprano);
int altoState = digitalRead(alto);
int tenorState = digitalRead(tenor);
int bassState = digitalRead(bass);
Serial.println (sopranoState);

//mapping the potentiometer values from 0 - 800 for easy reference
int mappedValue =  map(knobValue, 0, 1023, 0, 15);
//
if (sopranoState == HIGH) {
  tone(4, notes[mappedValue]);
  } else {
    tone(4, 0);
  }
if (altoState == HIGH) {
  tone(4, notes[(mappedValue -2 )]);
  } else {
    tone(4, 0);
  }
if (tenorState == HIGH) {
  tone(4, notes[(mappedValue- 6)]);
  } else {
    tone(4, 0);
  }
if (bassState == HIGH) {
  tone(4, notes[(mappedValue- 8)]);
  } else {
    tone(4, 0);
  }
}

Each one on its own:

All together: