http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060603/fob7.asp String Trio: Novel instrument strums like guitar, rings like bell Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 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
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.
Agreed. I'm sure I could re-create a similar sound with a guitar hooked up to a digital recorder on reverb.