Swan Street Collective

In Sping 2019 I joined the Swan Street Collective – a musical ensemble of young people with disabilities – as an associate musician for Drake Music – leaders in music, disability and technology. 

Led by the team at Brighter Sound – a pioneering music charity based in central Manchester – the project ran over a series of ~12 sessions from March and involved experimentation, improvisation and composition culminating with a special performance in the Barbirolli Room at the Bridgewater Hall on Sunday 23 Jun. 

My role (alongside Billy Payne from the DMLab North West) was to adapt and develop accessible instruments for the Collective that could be integrated into the sessions and final performance.

I subsequently researched, prototyped and developed three different devices/interfaces:

• a gesturally controlled MIDI ‘air harp’ – using openFrameworks v10.1 and a Leap Motion controller;
• a voice to MIDI convertor – using a Teensy 3.6, Audio Adaptor Board, Audio Library and cheap mic head-set;
• and a hand-held, wireless MIDI, distance sensor instrument – integrating an Adafruit Huzzah ESP8266 breakout, a Pololu VL6180X Time-of-Flight distance sensor + other components.

While these devices were decidedly prototypes – a bit too temperamental and lacking the intuitive control the young people really needed – being involved in the project was an informative and enjoyable experience. Watching them perform at the final concert and seeing how their confidence and musicianship had been nurtured and encouraged over the course of the project was genuinely heart warming.

There’s a post documenting and detailing the technical realisation of these devices on my development blog.