The Magic Piano that Makes Music Visible
You’ve never seen music like this: These guys built a magic piano that makes notes visible through bioluminescent algae. For real!
If you’ve ever watched instructional piano videos on YouTube or TikTok, you’ve probably seen the computer-generated visual effects that seem to shoot straight up from the piano like little bursts of color. CGI makes it possible – but what if there was a piano that could actually visualize notes this way?
Magic Piano
Inspired by these effects, the DIY team from HTX Studio set out to build exactly that: a piano that produces visual effects triggered by the notes you play – all without CGI or AI.
It turned out to be quite the endeavor. For three years, they experimented with various methods and went through numerous prototypes to build an actual light piano, only to discard one idea after another. Was it even possible?
The first version used fog machines and lasers. They even came up with a complex system for generating smoke rings using vortices, only to find out that they’d reached a dead end. No matter how hard they tried, they just couldn’t stop the fog or smoke from filling the entire room after a short while. Besides, the system was just too bulky.
Next, they tried it using water, paint, and oil, building several more prototypes along the way to perfect the system. At one point, a giant glass water tank burst, destroying all the electronics. According to HTX Studio, they seriously considered giving up at that point.
But then they had a stroke of genius: what if they could build a magic piano using marine bioluminescence? This mysterious effect is caused by certain algae that emit light when stimulated.
After three years and countless unsuccessful attempts, they’d finally found a way to make it work. The final version of the magic piano uses a water tank filled with bioluminescent algae, which are stimulated using air bubbles. Pure magic!
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