Creating Music with M&Ms: A Chaotic System

Introduction

Music can be created in many ways, but have you ever thought about using M&Ms to create music? In this article, we explore a chaotic system that uses M&Ms to generate music.

Randomness Attributes

The system involves four randomness attributes:

1 - Bag of M&M distribution

2 - Where the M&M lands on the board

3 - What M&M is mapped to which note

4 - How does the M&M land? Is the ‘M’ facing up or down?

Challenges

Mapping the grid location to notes or sequencer spacing can be challenging. It is also important to decide which sounds the M&Ms should make. For this project, a standard 4-quadrant grid was used inside of a 4-quadrant grid.

Future

To enhance the system, a camera could be added to capture the board and update the M&Ms in real-time. Additional buttons or knobs could be added to change the mapping of the M&Ms to different notes or sounds. A calibration mode could also be added to set the note of each color M&M.

Conclusion

Creating music with M&Ms is a unique and fun way to explore chaotic systems. With some improvements and creativity, this system can be used to generate a wide range of musical compositions. Below are some of the other song created using this technique with slight variations.

Other Sounds

Feedback

This project was part of a course and this is some of the feedback received.

Project 1 ideas:

Take an M&M bag and randomly pull M&Ms out. Depending on the color of the M&M, this will determine the note to be played. If an M&M is broken, this could possible change the note to make it flat or sharp. The timing of the notes played is not clear.

Class Feedback:

• Could make the M&M actual notes in music sheet that are playing

• Is there a purpose to this or is it random selection?

Updated Thought:

What if I record the M&Ms hitting a white backdrop. Record it in slowmotion? Whenever the M&M hits the paper, is when the note plays? This solves the timing and note length issue, but I’m not entirely sure where to go from here. Will need more thought and playing around to see what works.