This week I made some good progress on my project. At first, I was unsure of what I wanted my second instrument to be.
I had a few ideas:
- Drums. I felt they were a safe option to choose and relatively similar to the piano I had already made while also being distinct
- a string based instrument, specifically I was thinking of either a guitar or a harp. Whilst I felt they were even more different than the drums implementation wise, while researching I found a way to make a component shake in react native. JavaScript – How to make shaking image animation in React Native? – Stack Overflow I felt this could be a good effect to try and apply to any strings on my instrument, while the base of the instrument could either be created in css, drawn, or I could use an image online as a backdrop. If I went with this idea, I’d have my strings over the top of my instrument as pressables.
In the end though, I decided to go with a completely different idea.
I have loved otamatones for a long time, however any good otamatone is quite expensive so I thought “how about I make a prototype of an otamotone that I can play myself, for free?”
I knew I needed to break down the making of my otamatone into seperate parts. The stem, and the head. There is two playable sections of an otamatone, the stem changes the frequency and squeezing the head can change the noise produced.
I am inspiring my otamatone off the normal sized version, that can play one note at a time. My main goal is to focus on the slider and the frequency change, if I still have time I’ll implement the pressable head.
I did research audio file manipulation, but I felt that for my current knowledge of react native and with how much time I have, I felt as though I should take a different approach due to its complexity.
The method I ended up using was simpler and maybe not quite sounding the same as an otamatone, but I felt it was close enough.
I researched to see if there was a way I could make an otamatone like sound without using an audio file, and thankfully I found a way! OscillatorNode | React Native Audio API
Currently, I am trying to find a way to connect the slider value to my frequency value. According to the documentation I need create a new sound every time I want to use the oscillator. So I am trying to figure out a way to get around this. I might see if I need to make a pressable tag around the slider? Then when onpress is called I should then create another oscillation. I will test and find out.
During the week, I also attended a lecture. xxx talked about his experience with computer science and architecture and how he can also use this to support sustainability and awareness of the environment.
He discussed how uses an LLM to portray non human species (such as trees), so that people can talk to different tree species as a ‘character’. This provides an empathetic response, as trees cannot say how they ‘feel’ but with a LLM and imported API data they can have a discussion with people based on real time data to change their responses.
I feel that the reason people are so attached to AI chat models compared to AI art generation/animation is that speaking to something in a language we understand, human or AI, can promote discussion and comfort. Having a ‘tree’ talk to you can make you more attached to the tree’s species, as the guest speaker mentioned each species of tree has different weather preferences and different habitats, which will allow them to differ in conversation.