With a strong background in both vibrations and music, the Bachination Project within LAB2701 specializes in customized or optimized musical instruments.
Dr. Perkins has previous experience working as faculty in the Music Department at North Carolina State University, and he developed a cross-listed graduate level Music Engineering course.
Is music a computational experience?
To get an idea of whether this is true, a music hall was utilized as a physical reservoir computer. The room's fastest computational speed aligns with the fastest rhythm that humans can typically discern. It seems plausible that the acoustics of music halls was unintentionally designed to harness this type of computing.
Bradley Conrad, Dan Marghitu, Edmon Perkins, “Physical Reservoir Computing in a Music Hall Experiment”, Journal of Vibration and Acoustics (2024).
Asphaltophone
The asphaltophone, sometimes called a "singing road", is a musical instrument whose components are the road and a vehicle. By varying the space between bumps or ridges, the car will vibrate at a particular frequency when traveling at a specified speed, producing a tune. We modeled the asphaltophone and formulated a closed-form solution of the response, which we then used to optimize the design. This asphaltophone was then fabricated and installed at Auburn University as the #wareagleroad.
Alex Tucker, Edmon Perkins, “Asphaltophones: Modeling, Analysis, and Experiment”, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (2020).
Designer Guitar Pedals
Building on other work in the lab, we've modified an adaptive oscillator circuit to function as a guitar pedal. This type of circuit bending is popular for custom musical instruments.
XiaoFu Li, Edmon Perkins, “The Adaptive Oscillator Musical Instrument”, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (submitted).
STEM Education & Outreach
We have designed numerous STEM education modules, which utilize 3D printed ocarinas and other music examples. These modules focus on how musical instruments work and how they can be modeled.