As shown in the video below, Tristan Calderbank is a very talented singer and guitarist, but what’s perhaps most interesting about his performance is the percussion section. Instead of a person (or an entire band) standing beside him, a robotic shaker, tambourine, snare drum and bass drum all play together under MIDI control.

Each device is activated by an HS-311 servo—or two in the case of the snare—powered by an Arduino Uno and MIDI shield. Signals are sent to the Arduino by a laptop running Ableton Live, and servo velocity can be varied to further control sound. 

A write-up on Calderbank’s build process can be found here, including what didn’t work, plus info on sound isolation from the servos. Arduino code is available on GitHub.