Post 14: Continuation of post 13. Where is this going?

    I got seriously sidetracked in the last post, but all that harmonica stuff is in some way part of the project. In fact, I have considered making a small portable organ using harmonicas with a keyboard and compressed air. Well, that would be too much like a Melodica. I will have to make organ pipes!

   OK. I love the aluminum Steel Guitar, the Standing Aluminum, and the Aluminum Cello, but I can't play them because my left hand has no strength nor mobility. I will never be able to play live music with them, BUT could possibly sample the sounds and put them together in GarageBand. 

   Another possibility I am looking into is putting a motorized wheel in an "Electric Hurly-Burly". I read about how, before the advent of church organs, big "Hurly-Burlies" were used in churches instead, and have been tempted to design one. 

    I built a test zither a while back with several groups of 4 violin strings, a piezo contact sensor, and a preamp equalizer. I mounted two wheels I had on 12 volts geared electric motors with RPM's of 50 and 100, with speed controllers to slow them down. One of the wheels is 8" cut out of 1/8" tileboard, the other is 7" cut out of 3/4" high-density fiberboard and a 12V DC power supply. 

   The thinner wheel turning at 50 RPM actually seemed to produce a cleaner sound. The bigger strings sound better at a slower speed, the thin ones at a higher speed. These wheels are slightly out of round and have a slight wobble. To correct that in the next iteration, I ordered some metal flanges:

       I will cut a new test wheel out of a 1/4" thick piece of fiberboard, fit one of these flanges as close to the center I can, and then refine the fit with a sander while rotating the wheel.

      The size of the wheel also matters, of course. The bigger the wheel, the slower it needs to be. Which means that at the same RPM, the smaller shorter strings would require a larger wheel than the big long strings.

    As can be seen in the picture above, I have also been experimenting with an old saw blade bolted to the edge of the zither soundboard, and it produces interesting sounds. I am using an unused "bed leg" as a handle to bend the saw blade in an S shape. The wider cello bow is louder than the violin bow. The wheels do not work.

   I find it very hard to tune the strings just with the zither pins, and so ordered a dozen of Chinese fine tuners :

      I want to make this next "MusicMaking Machine" also mostly out of aluminum, and need an aluminum box as a soundboard and resonator. Rather than buying 1/8" sheet aluminum to make a box, I am going to use one I already have sitting in the attic collecting dust: my old 2005 MacPro G5.  I will have to make extended aluminum necks for the four 62" double-bass strings and the four 45" cello strings, and place bridges more or less in the center of the box. 

     I am not sure at this point whether the wheels will be below the strings inside the box with electric motors and joystick controllers, or above the strings and turned by hand. Nor am I sure how many wheels there will be, or how big. There will be several shorter violin string groups too attached to the edges of the box. All groups of strings will be tuned to a chord in the harmonic minor scale, as will all the other "instruments", so they make noise more or less in tune with each other... 

     There will be a piezo rod under the soundboard below each bridge like the cigar box guitar and the small test zither, and a preamp with equalizer. There will be a microphone inside the box too, as it can be made into an electric percussion instrument. I want to find a larger lower-pitched saw blade.

     I am now in the process of taking all the innards out, and it is not an easy job. Makes you wonder what alien put this thing together...

         Another thing I have been pondering is how to make a zither that can be easily bowed, and also easily retuned. The model for that is of course the ancient Chinese Guzheng. It's been around for well over 1000 years, and has been traditionally plucked, but sounds great when bowed. The curved shape allows easy single string bowing, and it can be re-tuned for a particular song just by moving the individual bridges.

      I wonder if I could make something similar but floor-standing, with strings all-around a cylindrical resonance chamber, and a handle to rotate it. Or maybe just a half-cylinder...