Published by KermMartian on May 10, 2009 at 8:45:08 PM CST | Discuss this article (24)



After a few months of tossing this idea around in my head I recently constructed the Multichord, a single-stringed musical instrument that uses a hard drive to vary the tension in the string. It can play a full octave of notes by applying specific tensions related to the voltage applied to the hard drive's read-write head, as produced by an array of power resistors. A musician sets the note with pairs of buttons on the end of the instruments, then plucks the string to make the note.

I have detailed the project with photos, a video, and plans and schematics below. Check out the video below and click through to the Project Page for all of the information.

Multichord Project Page
Digg the Multichord

Click on any of the thumbnails below for the full-sized image

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