Synthesizer Glove Plays Colors

Traditional music theory and sheet music notation really only resonate with one specific kind of mind. That leaves the rest of us feeling like we just can't do music, because those don't click for us. But through the power and versatility of maker hardware, we're seeing all kinds of new approaches to music that may feel more natural to some people. For example, John Park developed Bricktunes, a synthesizer glove the "plays" the colors of LEGO bricks.

This project stands out for two reasons. First, it is wearable. The user only needs to slip on the glove to start making music. Second, it ditches conventional key arrangements in favor a user-configurable color-coded interface. Touching the finger of the glove to a red object produces one sound, while touching a blue object produces another sound. As long as the colors are distinct enough, the glove can register as many as the user likes — Park used 12 unique colors, which seems ideal. And because those colors are on LEGO bricks, the user can arrange them in whatever order makes the most sense.

All of this is possible thanks to the Adafruit AS7341 10-Channel Light/Color Sensor, which is a spectrometer on a small breakout board. It works by shining pure white light at a colored surface and looking at the frequencies of the reflected light using a total of 16 individual sensors. This module can easily differentiate between a Bright Pink LEGO brick and a Coral LEGO brick.

Bricktunes contains an Adafruit RP2040 Prop-Maker Feather development board to take readings from the color sensor. That board has a built-in I2S audio amplifier, so it can play the sounds associated with each color. Park programmed the board in CircuitPython to take advantage of the fantastic synthio library, which can perform true synthesis on the RP2040 microcontroller. The provided code is awesome, but users can always alter that to play different notes or to work with other colors. The only other component is a 500mAh lithium battery for power.

The components can attach to any glove, so you're free to express yourself with a style that fits your own fashion. We suspect that this will make music a lot more fun for those of us who struggle with the traditional instruments and devices.