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Brendan Byrne 


is a designer and makerspace specialist from Brooklyn. He currently manages StudioLab at Princeton University.

Community Organizing
Workshops & Talks
Destiny Clock
Theseus
Kiwi Electronics
Games & Controllers
Performance Tools
Graphic Design

Ribbon Guitar : Positional Tracking


What
Circuit Bender’s Ball

Where
Fort Houston
Nasvhille, TN

When
May 2015
Collaborators
Elliott Sharp
Tony Youngblood

Links
Hackaday Article
Prototype Video
Build Photos
Materials & Software
Arduino
Interface Hardware
Bass Guitar
Effects Pedals
Reaktor

About

Ribbon Guitar is an experiment in digitally appropriating the natural gestures of guitar playing for sonic manipulation. The bass acts as a four channel ribbon controller. The frets were removed to accommodate four graphite strips. Wire connected to an analog input on a USB microcontroller was soldered directly to each string. When a string was pressed to a graphite strip, an analog voltage, representing the position of contact could be digitally interpreted. A bank of potentiometers and buttons was added to expand the instrument’s functionality. The instrument originally operated using the MIDI protocol, but was later improved to support OSC communication.













Brendan is a Brooklyn-based designer
hello@brendanbyrne.info