Post 4: Thinking ahead: Ideas about the Future Polyphonic Music Making Machine...

    While I go back and finish the two guitars, I want to start designing the future Music Making Machine, at least in my head, and start making sketches of the different parts. I had a brainstorm the other night, after watching YouTube videos about various interpretations of Da Vinci's ORGANISTA sketches. 

    Basically, he envisioned three ways to build a mechanical cello(or string organ):

      1. A single Hurly-burly type wheel with strings all around it and a keyboard lever mechanism lowering each string to touch the wheel and sound: 

    2. Several smaller offset wheels with groups of strings on an arc above, with a similar keyboard mechanism.

     3. A set of multiple mechanical bows.

     4. A continuous belt on pulleys running parallel to an slightly above the strings, with again a keyboard mechanism to raise each string to be "bowed" by the belt.

   There were attempts over the centuries to build such devices, especially in Germany and Spain. They used a four-wheel design:

   Somebody has built a gorgeous one recently with the same basic design and details the construction on their Viola Organista web site. 

   There is another design that was built with a single large wheel, and a rather unpractical circular keyboard. It's called the Wheel Harp:

   I actually like the sound of the Wheel Harp a little better than the sound of the Viola Organista. 

   I am not planning to build either one, but I want to incorporate the principles in the Music Making Machine. In fact, I had a brainstorm the other night after watching all that stuff, and got the idea for a simpler instrument based on the same basic idea that would play only the basic chords rather than single notes, eliminating the keyboard mechanism, which is very difficult to build and adjust, and making it simple enough for me to play.