Courses

Céin O'Dowd

How'ye, my name is Céin. I am a wexford man, capable of making noise, videos and photography. During my time in Creative Music Production in IADT I gained experience in sound for film and television, music production, sound engineering and programming. I'm faster on the computer than the lad from fatal deviation. Outside of college I have done video work as well as photography. Going forward I am very interested in sound for film and tv and I'm always up for learning new skills. My major works in college have been developing a synthesiser for use in traditional music and making a documentary on the importance of archiving.

Code for the synthesiser created in pure data.

Stripboard built to send the analogue inputs into the Bela Board platform.

A quick, informal demo of The Drone Machine

The Drone Machine

The Drone Machine is a synthesiser made to play drones in traditional and folk music.
The design philosophy has been to keep the instrument simple to play and easy to be expressive.

It uses force sensitive resistors to respond to the pressure placed on it with your fingers.
The other controls change volume, pitch, timbre and number of voices. The software runs on a Bela Board Mini and was programmed with the open source programming language pure data.

The form of the instrument is inspired by cigar box guitars with the housing made from an old promotional chocolate box.
Tonally the sounds of the Drone Machine are inspired by the Shruti Box, Harmonium and Uilleann Pipes.

Thesis PDF

Creating an Intuitive and Portable Digital Instrument for Use in Traditional Music. Can The Two Be Fused?

This thesis documents the creation of The Drone Machine, going into detail on development, methodology and project outcomes.

Thesis PDF