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Designing wind chimes that produce accurate musical notes can be a complex process. My app proposal, Windsong, attempts to simplify this by providing an interface that allows the user to customise a wind-chime configuration based on both sight and sound. To achieve this, the user inputs desired notes using the on-screen keyboard, along with geometry parameters. These are sent to Grasshopper using Rhino.Compute to modify the geometry based on the chime lengths required, and returns it as metadata to be processed by a Javascript audio engine and exported as a .csv for easy construction.
Controls // UI
Back-end
The grasshopper script includes an internalised database that changes the chime diameter based on the material and nominal size selected by the user.
Geometry // UI
Back-end
Note selection // UI
The user inputs the notes they would like to include in their wind chime set, with a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 8. Selected notes are ordered automatically by length, and the UI will automatically renumber chimes if one is deselected.
Back-end
The notes selected on the keyboard and sent as indices to Grasshopper, where a second internalised database handles the lengths per space based on the nominal size, material, and note selected.
The Grasshopper script returns metadata in the following structure (shown right):
a. Note
b. Length
c. Hang point
In doing so, the system is able to adapt to changing numbers of chimes without mixing up the metadata subcategories.
Outputs // TONE.js integration
The app uses the TONE library to generate sound both on note selection and as a polytone on pressing the PLAY button. For this, a custom synthesiser was created to mimic the sound of windchimes.
Outputs // .csv export
When the user is happy with their selected notes and have trialled their overall chime sound, they are able to export a data file showing how much length of material they will need for each selected note, as well as where to drill the hang points to achieve the specific note frequencies.
