Gear Orchestra


It began with an interest in gears and how they function. With the consistency and therapeutic nature of gears, a musical context surround this idea and the notion of gears keeping time was the focal point. The exploration of gears and timing lead myself and Trent onto the path of creating a musical instrument using a set of gears as the centerpiece for control of what happens within the music.

We immediately set out into illustrator to begin creating gears to be laser cut. This seemed like a simple idea but lead to a world of complexity in trying to understand the finer points of gears. Pressure angle, contact ratios and diametrical pitch all become our common parlance of the early weeks. Prototype after prototype was explored finding what would work best as well as allow us to scale the project accordingly.

As the project progressed, more definitive decisions were made around our approach of gathering gear information and translating that into the musical or acoustical realm. The consensus was to use reed switches underneath the gears which would act as a digital switch, triggering solenoids and other motors thus creating sound. Gathering materials that were available, we began to construct acoustic instruments which could be played with the attacks and actions of various solenoids.

Using the transistor lab as a foundation, we setup a series of four solenoids that would trigger along side of the reed switches.