The Riff Machine

Did you ever want to organize a jam session and let people with no previous musical experience jump in as well? Our riff machine will play super as long as all musicians in the room play in C major and/or A minor scale.

AudioPlexus aimed at creating and applying effective and innovative inclusion strategies in a mixed abilities group of young people in Itzehoe, Germany, through combined use of music and technology. It is supported by START a program of the Robert Bosch Stiftung, conducted in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki and the German Association of Sociocultural Centers, supported by the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation and the Bodossaki Foundation.

https://www.facebook.com/AudioPlexusIZ/

To begin you will need:

1x Bare Conductive Touch Board

1x Bare Conductive Electric Paint 10ml

or

1x Bare Conductive Touch Board Starter Kit

–

12x crocodile clip

Cardboard

Markers/Papers any material for handcrafts that you like

Design different buttons for the different riffs of your riff machine

Add conductive paint and/or copper tape to make your buttons conductive.

Don’t forget to create connections till the edge of your cardboard where the crocodile clip is going to connect.

Our media educator Ben Heuer created this set of 20 riffs for our workshop that you can download them here.

They are made with Magix.

Now it’s time to upload your selected feedback sound onto the Touch Board. If you haven’t changed the MP3 files on the Touch Board before, have a look here. Choose 12 of our riffs and load them onto the board.

Connect the board to the different buttons and Jam!

In our project we spread the sounds in 3 different Touch Boards and passed them through a sound mixer to create a space for interactions between the participants.

In case you want each board to play two riffs simultaneously or create crazy effects for your riffs you can set the board as a midi interface as explained here.