The blockenspiel is an instrument made up of dozens of motors that hit objects in precise ways. Two arduino microcontrollers (aka tiny computers), running custom software control all of the motors, and gather input data from 4 custom-built hand controllers.

The "brain" of this operation is a computer running a common music software called Ableton Live, which sends and receives data from the microcontrollers.

The result is an interactive percussion instrument. It's infinitely configurable: it can play any rhythm you feed to it (via the laptop). The custom controller (buttons and knobs) can then be mapped to parameters on the laptop that change the character of the rhythms being played.

In this way the blockenspiel can really be played by a user.

I worked on this project with Oliver Black-Johnson at Carleton College in 2026.

Check out a video of the project here.

Check out the open-sourced code here.