Rock Band: Hear The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” Played with Electromechanical Instruments That Make Music with Rocks

From Neil Men­doza comes “Rock Band,” an amal­ga­ma­tion of “electro­mechan­i­cal instru­ments that make music with rocks by throw­ing them through the air, slap­ping them and mak­ing them vibrate.” Above, hear the band play one of my favorite Bea­t­les songs, “Here Comes the Sun.” There’s no Paul, John, George and Ringo here. Instead, you’ve got the fol­low­ing band mem­bers:

Pinger — fires small rocks at alu­mini­um keys using sole­noids.
Spin­ner — launch­es mag­net­ic rocks, Hematite, at pieces of mar­ble. Rocks are launched by spin­ning mag­nets using Applied Motion applied-motion.com step­per motors.
Slap­per — slaps rocks with fake leather.
Buzzer — vibrates the plunger of a sole­noid against a piece of mar­ble.

Accord­ing to Neil, “the whole project is con­trolled by a com­put­er run­ning a MIDI play­er writ­ten in open­Frame­works talk­ing to a Teen­sy. The machines were designed using Autodesk Fusion 360 and Autodesk Inven­tor.” You can find instruc­tions on how to build your own Pinger here.

via The Kids Should See This