2EZ2Play – Music Box

2ez2play
This is no ordinary music box. It’s an interactive music box. It makes composing and enjoying music a very easy task, basically, too easy to play.
diagram
Let me explain a bit about the box. If you look at the diagram attached, you will see a spherical enclosure, the bottom of which is attached a speaker for sound output. Above that you can see a depressed surface (gray shaded area). This surface allows the control of the drum beats in the song. On the right of this surface, you will see a knob-like structure. This knob allows one to pinch and pull it to change the type of strings playing in a song. To the extreme left of the sphere, you will see a bump like structure. That bump allows one to change the beats per minute of the song by turning it.
diagram2
This image is of the other end of the music box. This has in the center, a single line LED matrix display, and a swipe/slide area to change the genre of the music playing.

The Music Box allows everyone to compose beautiful music. The Working is simple, switch on the music box, swipe to select the particular genre you want to compose a song in. Tap to confirm the selection. Your music starts whenever you start by either pushing the depressed area to start the drums or by pulling the knob-like structure to start the strings and the bassline of the song. The same surfaces would be used to change the type of strings that are playing and the type of drum beats that are playing. String variants would cycle from rhythms to rhythms and solos. Drum beats would cycle from drum beats to drum rolls. If you wish to change the tempo of the song, you can do so by turning the bump like structure. You would be allowed to change the tempo of the song in multiples of 1x,1.2x,1.4x,1.6x,2x where x is the current bpm.

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Additionally, LED lights attached inside the translucent material allows a visualization to be displayed based on the beats of the song.

All these create a new combination every time making every song unique in its own ways. There is no failure, anyone can play a beatiful piece of music on this. We were able to do this by restricting the factors that vary in the song and curating the original content to be generic and ones that can easily transition into one another in a particular genre.

Through the music box, we are able to create interesting affordance – output mappings.

  • Pinching/ Pulling – String manipulation
  • Pushing – Drumbeat manipulation
  • Turning – Beats per minute manipulation

Both the input and the output reside within the same boundary of the surface of the sphere.

I feel this will be an interesting thing to play with and it would empower people with the capability to compose music with minimum efforts.

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