As I’ve shown slightly on the 3D Workshop post, the name for my Drone Machine device project is Gravity Bender. This idea of giving the instrument a name just came up when designing the front panel, an I thought that it would fit nicely within the design. The principles of synthesis used on this device, based on additive and AM synthesis, modulate the waves one to another and that makes me think on bending shapes or “bending the gravity”, therefore my choice of this name for my creation.
The idea of creating an instrument from scratch really fascinated me as a possible project for the unit Expanded Studio Practice for 21st Century Sound Artists, and I also thought that it would be a good idea to use the instrument to compose some sounds for film score, in order to combine my assignment with the Sound for Screen unit as well.
The Bela Board was the perfect tool to carry this task and, as shown before, I had the Pure Data patch that I wanted to use for the Drone Machine, the enclosure designed at the 3D Workshop and the electronic components needed for the construction, so I was ready to build it. After some research, I managed to adapt my original PD patch to the Bela Board requirement and the patch looked like this:
Then, I started to connect some jumpers to the Bread Boards and attached the potentiometer, having created the first prototype for the Gravity Bender.
And it sounded like this: