fabric(ated) piano

by jill

I was interested in fabricating an electric keyboard made out of fabrics. Once creating a steady read, using resistors and conductive materials, a level of output could be assigned an particular sound. My first inspiration came from a classic movie, “Big”, and the famous scene inside FAO Schwartz. You can see the scene by following this link:

The conductive fabric is to be unfolded and used as the “keyboard”. The conductive thread was used to sew the resistors into the gloves. The lilypad arduino was programmed to translate the sounds into the computer.

The resistors were twisted into coils, enabling them to easily be sewn into the gloves. I used a pair of pliers to easily wrap the wire.

The resistors were then sewn into the gloves with conductive thread. I sewed a starting point at the bottom of the glove. This is where the alligator clips will attach to the gloves. The conductive thread wrapped around the glove going from the thumb to the pinky. Each time I inserted a resistor, I sewed one side on with the thread from the previous finger, then started another piece of thread to sew on the other side. In other words, with each resistor I started a new piece of thread.

On the end of each finger, I sewed a visible strand of thread on the exterior of the glove. This was where I would touch the finger down to the conductive fabric. As they were all connected, by the time I got to the pinky finger, the resistance was much diminished, having gone through four resistors.

For the second glove, I decided to double the amount of resistors.

If I were to do the project again, I would have sewn in different numbers, as two fingers have similar readings to glove 1 (2 resistors and 4 resistors).

From here, I attached the alligator clips to the gloves and the arduino, and attached the arduino to the computer. When touching the fabric, each finger has a different read.

As each finger has a steady output due to the resistors, each level can be assigned a specific sound. Unfortunately, my computer was unable to work with the provided software due to a systems requirement. I am working on finding a better reader and will post the results as soon as possible.

Eventually, I wanted to create something like this: