The Aerophone Kit: A Toolkit for Pneumatic Musical Instrument Design
Modular pneumatic instruments, without electronics.
We present the Aerophone Kit, a modular toolkit for designing pneumatic musical instruments that operate through air-pressure circuits without electronic or digital components. The system emerged from laboratory observations in which pneumatic circuits developed for soft robotics research produced rhythmic and tonal sounds. The Aerophone Kit consists of modular elements that can be configured to create bespoke musical instruments, including pneumatic keyboards and autonomous pneumatic oscillators. The toolkit enables tactile musical interaction through the direct manipulation of air pressure. This paper presents the system architecture, the acoustic characterization of whistle-based sound generation, and two prototype configurations that illustrate melodic and autonomous sound behaviors. We further report on a structured user study with ten participants (five musicians and five non-musicians), examining learnability, control, and exploratory engagement through hands-on interaction.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{DiMaggio2026,
title = {The Aerophone Kit: A Toolkit for Pneumatic Musical Instrument Design},
author = {Maggio, Francesco Di and van Riet, Catharina Maria and Picella, Sergio and Eggen, Berry and Hengeveld, Bart},
booktitle = {NIME '26: International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, London, UK},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.20784244}
}