learning the ropes

Images from the latest building session.

I made a solid wooden frame to hold one of the aluminum pulleys. There’s a problem, though. The shaft exhibits a fair degree of wobble when the gyroscope is spun. During critique on Thursday, it was suggested that there should be a piece of metal in the hole so the bottom of the shaft will turn more smoothly. It would be even better to use bearings… which I’ve now tried.

I salvaged bearings from the read/write heads of two hard disk drives. Mounting the bearings was tricky, though, because they must be precisely aligned. This is even more difficult for me as my bearings aren’t the same size. You can see this in my pictures of the PVC pipe gyroscope.

I think I would like to make a gyroscope frame out of metal pipe next.

My friend Mark P. Sullivan always said he wanted to make windchimes with all of the dead hard disk drives he had collected over the years. This came back to me as we struggled to find ways to make music with tops, so I started disassembling all of the broken drives I could find to listen to the sound of the platters

Case Mods
We modified our original protoype using one of the disk platters. Several small screws were placed within a cavity in the top beneath the platter in the hopes of making a sweet ringing sound. This was not successful. The centripetal / centrifugal (I always confuse them) force kept the screws jammed against the walls of the top as it spun so it didn’t make any sound.

This is the best spinning top we have so far. Its proportions are comparable top those given in an article we found about machining tops from aluminum.

Whistling… Not Quite
I tried to drill holes in the platters, thinking it might be possible to get a whistling sound as the top spun. The only sound I produced was a pop as the platter shattered. It appears that the disk platters are not metals as I thought. They shatter like glass.

I constructed another test top out of a metal cone from a ceiling-mounted air vent we found on the junk shelf. I did my best to match the “ideal” top proportions.

This one doesn’t spin very well — and is quite dangerous when launched from the power drill.

Design
Top Design Principles
Machining Tops from Aluminum Stock
Beautifully Handcrafted Tops
Paper Clip Top

History
Where did the Spinning Top Come From
Every possible way to slice up the properties and names of tops….

Movies

The sounds Ian Russell gets out of his tops are quite diverse considering he is only using a ribbed wooden fruit bowl as a resonator.

Glossary
shaft – stem, peg
body
center of mass
axis

.what.
Greg Stringer and I will create a series of musical tops which act as an improvised toy orchestra. Each top in the series creates a distinct and pleasing musical sound. As multiple tops spin simultaneously, their musical sounds will combine into a larger homogeneous sound. The sound of several tops spinning together will be unique and fleeting; it will be difficult to spin the same tops in exactly the same order at identical velocities.

.why.
I’m interested in systems which enable musical improvisation among people who have the desire to create music but lack the technical competence on a musical instrument. The musical tops present a low barrier to music creation; they are found in many cultures and require little skill to operate.

Spinning tops transform from one shape into another. No matter the starting shape of a top, once it rotates it forms the shape of a circle. In recycling, a similar process occurs. The designed shape of an object, after its operating lifecycle is complete, is transformed back into raw material and then back into a new designed object. The rotation of our tops will refer to this process.

.how.
The tops will be constructed from salvaged parts to highlight the theme of reuse and the cycle of products from raw material to designed object and back to raw material.

Several types of tops will be created to provide desired musical properties: percussive and melodic sounds.

I’m looking for inspiration for the types of sounds we can make with musical tops.

SoundPlay
- Outdoor musical instruments

WindWorld
- Experimental Musical Instruments