Musical Circuits

Elliot Inman has led workshops in electronics and creative coding on topics ranging from basic electronics and Arduino/CircuitPython programming to Fast Fourier Analysis, 8-bit chip synths, MIDI controllers, and the Internet of Things. He developed and led the "Musical Circuits" series as Maker-in-Residence at UNC (spring 2016), "Quantification: The Art of Making Data" workshop series at NC State (fall 2016), and "Microcontrollers for the Rest of Us" at the University of Rochester (fall 2017). At Knobcon 2016, he presented “Experimental Music: Composing with an Arduino Midi Controller,” demonstrating unusual musical applications for a standard Arduino Uno. At Moogfest 2017, he led Musical Pencil CMOS Oscillator workshops; in 2018, two workshops: one building an 8-bit wavetable circuit and another using Audacity to develop an imaginary soundscape; and, in 2019, CircuitPython MIDI Controller and CMOS Chip Square Wave Oscillator workshops. He is an active participant in the Maker Faire scene, having presented at maker faires in Burlington, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, and Rochester, NY. In addition to his work with electronic circuits, he has given talks on interdisciplinary studies at the Black Mountain College ReViewing conference in 2018 and 2019, was a part of the UNC School of the Arts' Make Night series at the Center for Design in 2017, and presented a talk on his own design aesthetic entitled "Deliberately Disorienting Design" at Winston-Salem's Pint of Science series in the summer of 2019. His musical roots include playing guitar, piano, and trumpet in various rock and jazz bands and writing pop songs. These days, his main musical interest is experimental music and improvisation with electronics designed to bend time and our expectations of what music can be. In addition to his work with musical circuits, he holds a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology and works for a leading analytics company developing data visualization software to democratize the communication of complex data and statistical modeling. He blogs about his musical experiments at MusicalCircuits.com.