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2005-01-11 #1

Created by nick. Last edited by nick, 7 years and 29 days ago. Viewed 1,107 times. #5
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Block Jam: Musical Dominoes

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A project which came to my attention via >>Music Thing (via >>We Make Money Not Art): Sony's >>Block Jam.

This system is interesting for a number of reasons:

  • it's physical: the blocks have buttons and lights, and are connected manually, causing musical pulses to move between the blocks which flash in response;
  • it's stateful: there are routers which can change direction on each pulse they receive;
  • it's two-dimensional.
There are Quicktime movies of the system in use >>here and >>here and a Shockwave Demo on the main page. More technical details >>here.

It's hard to tell exactly how sophisticated it is musically - it's basically a collection of state machines with a sample library - but it looks fun.

Of course, that old bugbear of "allowing anyone to make music" rears its ugly head. I don't see Block Jam as a musical instrument, and it appears to be of limited use in musical education; it certainly isn't a compositional tool. It's a toy. Chill, people.

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