How to play the sampolin!

When I was in composition class as a sophomore at the University of Missouri, we talked briefly about composer/performance artist Laurie Anderson. We learned about an electronic instrument she created, the tape-bow violin. Basically, she had a violin body with no strings. About where she would bow a regular violin, she had a tape play-head. Then, where the hair of a bow ought to be, she had magnetic tape that had sounds recorded to it. By drawing the tape across the playhead, she could play the samples in either direction at any speed. Cool right? I'm glad you agree.

The sampolin is a digital version of Anderson's tape-bow violin, with a couple of extra features. Our sampolin will not actually use magnetic tape. Instead, it will control the playback of several digital samples on a computer, using Puredata. Because it's digital, we can change from one sample to another very quickly. (Anderson had several different bows that she could switch out.) So the left hand will have several buttons to press which can trigger different samples.

Another extra feature will be a recording "string." Anderson's violin had one contact point for the bow. The sampolin will have two. One to playback pre-recorded samples and one to record in new samples live. Playing both the record and play strings simultaneously (as a double-stop) could hopefully give us a kind of delay effect.

The last feature (and biggest "maybe") that we hope to add is pressure sensing under the play "string" to control volume. The more pressure from the bow, the louder the output. This is the biggest maybe for two reasons: 1) the sensor that would account for pressure is kind of expensive. 2) it would mean I have to practice this crazy instrument. The more complex it gets, the more the sampolin behaves like a "real" musical instrument. The closer this thing gets to that level of complexity, the more practice it will require to achieve sampolin virtuosity.

Currently, we have a working(ish) sampolin prototype. It's basically made of dowel rods, foam board, and wire. It's held together by Scotch tape and cable ties. It's controlled by (or does it control?) an Arduino microcontroller, which drives a patch in Pd. Here it is in all it's...um...glory?


Side notes:

• A Guitar Hero controller is really close to the same size as a viola. Nate plays the viola. Hmm...
• Tomorrow's shopping list for RadioShack, Lowe's, and Tractor Supply includes the following: pushbuttons, flexible copper tubing, graphite lubricant spray, and quarter-inch audio jacks.