That is super cool!
I know this is an old post, but I just had to jump in here and say wow.
The details and styling are beautiful, and the technical build is genius! Using expression instead of velocity is definitely the right way to go. And you managed to make this completely wireless!
This reminds me of the Roland MIDI Accordion. (In the hands of a talented musician, it doesn’t even sound like an accordion!)
Form, function, and style. Thank you so much for sharing this!
Love it!
Thanks for the kind words.
Since I posted this, I did go ahead and build a synthesizer for the concertina to attach to. It’s based on a Raspberry Pi 3b+ and Fluidsynth. I wrote a custom GUI application in C++ using the Qt toolkit to control the synth – instrument selection, volume, reverb, etc. Here’s what it looks like:
It’s about 10cm x 7cm x 7cm, so pretty compact. The case is made from stacked sheets of acrylic cut (on the GF, naturally) to fit the electronic bits – the Pi, screen and amplifier – and to let the blinkenlights shine through. The screen is touch sensitive, so controlling the synth is done by poking and sliding.
After I initially made the concertina, I’ve tweaked the the function that maps measured bellows pressure to MIDI expression several times as I gained experience in playing it, but haven’t touched it in quite a while now, even though I use it nearly every day.
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