My first steps with Arduino

Recently I got my first Aruino Board (Arduino Uno, as a matter of fact) in the context of a lecture I am attending. After connecting a LED to it and letting it blink I decided to create my first Chiptunes track on it. So I picked a Piezo Speaker, looked at the toneMelody example and decided to adapt it to the song Aerodynamic by Daft Punk (i got the tones from here: Aerodynamic guitar tabs).

Thanks to the aforementioned toneMelody example, there is a external file called pitches.h which holds a list of 88 notes going from B0 to D#5, so there’s no need to worry about that. After picking a note, playing it will be the next task. This works as follows:

void setup() {
  int noteDuration = 1000/4;

  tone(8, NOTE_C1, noteDuration);
  delay(noteDuration);
  noTone(8);
}

Basically, there are three steps in playing a tone. Step 1 is to actually play it. tone() takes three arguments: the output pin, the note and the duration of its play(1000/4 means quarter note, 1000/8 would be an eight note and so on). In step 2 we define how long the system will wait while the note is played until we stop playing the note at a desired pin in step 3. If we would skip the delay()-method, we wouldn’t hear any sound at all because it would be stopped immediately after it would be played. Choosing a higher delay time than play time means to create a pause after the note.

So after talking about that, here’s my code for Aerodynamic:

 /*
  Aerodynamic

 Plays a melody

 circuit:
 * 8-ohm speaker on digital pin 8

 created 17 Oct 2012
 modified 17 Oct 2012
 by Petzy

This sketch is based on the toneMelody example:
 http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Tone

 */
 #include "pitches.h"

// notes in the melody:
int melody[] = {
  NOTE_D4, NOTE_F3, NOTE_B3, NOTE_F3,      // D4-F3-B3-F3
  NOTE_D4, NOTE_GS3, NOTE_B3, NOTE_GS3,    // D4-Ab3-B3-Ab3
  NOTE_G4, NOTE_B3, NOTE_E4, NOTE_B3,      // G4-B3-E4-B3
  NOTE_E4, NOTE_A3, NOTE_CS4, NOTE_A3,     // E4-A3-C#4-A3
  NOTE_D4, NOTE_FS4, NOTE_B3, NOTE_FS4,    // D4-F#4-B3-F#4
  NOTE_D4, NOTE_GS3, NOTE_B3, NOTE_GS3,    // D4-Ab3-B3-Ab3
  NOTE_G4, NOTE_B3, NOTE_E4, NOTE_B3,      // G4-B3-E4-B3
  NOTE_E4, NOTE_A3, NOTE_CS4, NOTE_A3,     // E4-A3-C#-A3
};

int outputPin     = 8;
int maxChords     = 8;
int maxRepeats    = 4;         // every chord will be repeated 4 times
int noteDuration  = 1000/8;    // 4 = quarter note, 8 = eight note, etc.

void setup() {
  // play sound once
  playSound();
}

void playSound() {
  // play all 8 chords
  for (int chords = 0; chords < maxChords; chords++) {
    // play every chord 4 times
    for (int chordTone = 0; chordTone < 4; chordTone++) {
      // play all 4 tones of every chord
      for (int repeats = 0; repeats < maxRepeats; repeats++) {

        // play the tone
        tone(outputPin, melody[chords*maxRepeats + repeats], noteDuration);
        // set a delay between the notes
        delay(noteDuration);
        // stop the tone playing
        noTone(outputPin);
      }
    }
  }
}