http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060603/fob7.asp

String Trio: Novel instrument strums like guitar, rings like bell


http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060603/a7351_1781.jpg



Now, mathematicians in Canada say that they have invented a family of music-making devices based on a network of three or more string segments—for instance, a Y-shaped string anchored at three endpoints. The extra segments supply exotic overtones that a single string doesn't, say the researchers.

I'm just bumping this thread and marking it so I can check it out when I get home.
I seem to be having trouble opening the URL at work, and I would love to read more.

You could always post some stuff from the article in the meantime, if you didn't mind.

Try here:

http://www.tritare.com/

and here:

http://www.acoustics.org/press/151st/Leger.html


Here's a sound sample:

http://www.acoustics.org/press/151st/Leger-5.wav

yale

Cool, thanks.
I wish I had a speaker on my work computer so I could hear what it sounds like.

String Trio: Novel instrument strums like guitar, rings like bell


Ingeniously contrived but not so novel. To listen to the sound samples you would not think it was anything so special, the most obvious characteristic being a pitch wobble akin to a bottlenecked guitar, not so much because of any overtone.

Instruments such as Viols and Sitars were long since fitted with sympathetic strings, and the tone of a Piano or Harpsichord also tends to be bell like, according to the extent that the unstruck strings are allowed to resonate.

--- Ron.

To listen to the sound samples you would not think it was anything so special, the most obvious characteristic being a pitch wobble akin to a bottlenecked guitar, not so much because of any overtone.

Agreed. I'm sure I could re-create a similar sound with a guitar hooked up to a digital recorder on reverb.