{PAM}DI Music Box: Primarily Analogico-Mechanical, Digitally Iterated Music Box

PAMDI is an electromechanical music controller based on an expansion of thecommon metal music boxes. Our system enables an augmentation of the musicalproperties by adding different musical channels triggered and parameterized bynatural gestures during the ``performance''. All the channels are generatedform the original melody recorded once at the start.To capture and treat the different expressive parameters both natural andintentional, our platform is composed of a metallic structure supportingsensors. The measured values are processed by an arduino system that finallysends the results by serial communication to a Max/MSP patch for signaltreatment and modification. We will explain how our embedded instrument aims to bring a certain awarenessto the player of the mapping and the potential musical freedom of the veryspecific -- and not that much automatic - instrument that is a music box. Wewill also address how our design tackles the different questions of mapping,ergonomics and expressiveness while choosing the controller modalities and theparameters to be sensed.