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Robotic tongue drummer bangs out all the ambient hits
If you like to listen to those “deep focus” soundtracks that are all ambient and relaxing, then you’ve heard a tongue drum in action. A tongue drum, or tank drum, is a unique percussion instrument traditionally made from an empty propane cylinder — though purpose-built models are now common. Several tongues are cut into one […]
Solenoid actuators like these move linearly and can strike with pretty decent force, which makes them a good choice. Cook’s drum has eight tongues, so his robot has eight solenoids held by flexible friction arms mounted onto a C-shaped laser-cut MDF frame. The MIDI input can come from a something like a keyboard for real-time manual control, or it can come from a PC for playing pre-written (or algorithm-generated) ambient hits.
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