Playing popular songs with Arduino and a buzzer

Buzzer is used to generate sound, beep or even melody of a song. It can be found in alarm devices, computers, timers and confirmation of user input such as a mouse click or keystroke. A piezo buzzer is not like a regular speaker that you might think of. It uses a material that actually changes shape when you apply electricity to it which in turn creates noise. The faster you bend the material, the higher the pitch of the noise that is produced.

Prerequisites

To understand the inner workings of the buzzer, we suggest checking out our article on How to use a buzzer with Arduino.

Components

Wiring schema

Pairing an Arduino and a piezo buzzer is easy. The buzzer is equipped with two pins: one for signal control and another for ground. In the setup below, the tone control will be managed by Arduino's D9 pin.

Importing pitches library

The code used to generate the melody uses an extra library available on our GitHub. This file contains all the pitch values for typical notes.

To import a library, open the Arduino IDE, go to Sketch > Include Library > Add .ZIP Library and select the library file downloaded from our GitHub repository.

Then you can simply use include statement:

#include "pitches.h"

It will include the library with predefined pitch constants so the melody generation becomes easier.

Arduino code

The main program uses two arrays, melody and durations, to define the sequence of notes and their corresponding duration, respectively. The loop() function will iterate over notes and and use assigned duration for each note. A pause between notes is introduced to distinguish them, calculated as the note's duration plus 30%. After playing a note, the noTone() function stops the buzzer to prevent any lingering sound.

#include "pitches.h"

#define BUZZER_PIN 9

int melody[] = {
  // Notes goes here
};

int durations[] = {
  // Notes duration goes here
};

void setup()
{
  pinMode(BUZZER_PIN, OUTPUT);
}

void loop()
{
  int size = sizeof(durations) / sizeof(int);

  for (int note = 0; note < size; note++) {
    //to calculate the note duration, take one second divided by the note type.
    //e.g. quarter note = 1000 / 4, eighth note = 1000/8, etc.
    int duration = 1000 / durations[note];
    tone(BUZZER_PIN, melody[note], duration);

    //to distinguish the notes, set a minimum time between them.
    //the note's duration + 30% seems to work well:
    int pauseBetweenNotes = duration * 1.30;
    delay(pauseBetweenNotes);

    //stop the tone playing:
    noTone(BUZZER_PIN);
  }
}

Note: tone() function uses one of the built in timers on the Arduino’s micro-contoller and works independently of the delay() function. Use of the tone() will interfere with PWM output on pins 3 and 11 (on boards other than the Mega).

This program provides a flexible framework for creating simple melodies by adjusting the contents of the melody and durations arrays. Users can customize the musical composition by populating these arrays with different note frequencies and durations.

Popular songs

At the moment, the following melodies are available. The list can be updated with new ones based on user requests. So, feel free to leave a comment with melodies you would like to hear.

Songs

• Kaleo - Way down we go (NEW)

• Imagine Dragons - Enemy (NEW)

• Maroon 5 - Memories (NEW)

• Max feat Keshi - It's you (NEW)

• Djo - End of Beginning (NEW)

• Ed Sheeran - Shape of you

• Chevelle - The Red

• It's a small world - contributed by @Wizmann

Movies

• Game of Thrones

• Harry Potter

• Home Alone

• Pink panther

• Pirates of the Caribbean

• Star wars

• Subway Surfers - Theme song (NEW)

• The Godfather

• The lion sleeps tonight

• The Nightmare Before Christmas

• The Simpsons - Theme song

• Fast & Furious - Tokyo Drift (NEW)

Games

• Doom

• Mario Bros

• Pacman

• Tetris

Other

• Happy Birthday

• Nokia ringtone

• Merry Christmas

Credits

Official GitHub: https://github.com/hibit-dev/buzzer