BRAINSTORMING

Hi Experimental Musicians:

You probably know that I make up an imaginary experimental sound event list every year ( http://www.wfmu.org/~jhhl/Best ) and some of those ideas are getting pretty feasible.

I had an idea about a week ago (April 2015), which was: what if there were a spec for making an all acoustic modular synthesis system. That is, something analogous to 1v/octave and MIDI in the worlds of analog and digital synthesis.

Old technologies like those for pipe organs, plumbing, fluidics, and phonographs would combine with modern materials and acoustic science to make musical modules that could be linked together with tubes, or in some cases brake cables, or rotational gear trains coupled with super magnets or something. There's some cool technology out there, like the air equivalents of transistors. There's nothing that prevents other fluids from playing a role - and even electricity as long as it's basically generated by the system or is made by a Van De Graaff generator or something. An interesting problem is: how to generate sounds and effectively pipe them around instead of letting it spread out into the air.

The spec would cover standardized pipe sizes and pressures, rotation speeds to expect where rotation is necessary, some standards as to racking them up if they are rackable. One way to go with this would be a very tight spec, so that, each device would specify its acceptable range of air pressure and rotational speeds, or it could go all loosy-goosy. Making a standardized pipe, like a latex hose, and a standard (3d printed?) set of nozzles and valves and regulators would go a long way to externalizing the connection problems and letting an inventor concentrate on building the sound making or altering effects.

It may be a completely unviable idea, but I thought I'd run it past my list in case somebody else gets excited.

Of course, there's a domain: http://AcousticModularSynth.com , and as I come up with more concrete plans and implementations, that site will get more in it.

This GitHub WIKI is a good place to put in comments - I've been putting in ideas and links as I bump into them .

I don't have a great name for this system yet. Nothing as nice as MIDI, AcMoSy is ugly and soviet-esque.

If you want in on the community, join up here at the GitHub. And tell your friends if you think that would help.

And if this is a big failure, it'll just remain on my 2015 imaginary sound events list.

Thanks ! -- Henry

BTW .. if anyone would like to build the Turquoise Torquemada from 2014, I'd really like one.