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String Trio: Novel instrument strums like guitar, rings like bell
At the heart of many of the world’s musical instruments is the same, simple component—a string stretched tight between two points. Plucked, bowed, or struck, each of an instrument’s strings creates ear-catching vibrations.
The first, and so far only, member of this new family of instruments is the tritare — rhymes with guitar — devised by mathematicians Samuel Gaudet and Claude Gauthier of the University of Moncton in New Brunswick. Resembling a guitar with two extra necks, the tritare hosts six Y-shaped strings. As in an ordinary guitar, each tritare string runs from a tuning peg along a fretted neck. However, the familiarity ends at an unanchored juncture point where the string branches. From there, one string segment runs along each of the two extra, unfretted necks.
Not only am I not a mathematician, I don’t understand the concept. My first reaction was that this can’t work, the examples demonstrate this.
All music using more then one note requires the notes to match – harmonics. Such as when a guitar or piano is played, certain strings are played at specific notes to assemble a harmonic sound. With the tritar when a string is plucked open it produces a specific not. The matching strings do not necessarily produce the same not or a corresponding harmonic note. Even if the string(s) are all tuned to “A”, as soon as the string is fretted the other ends of the string will have to be fretted as well or they will produce dis-harmonic notes.
In short, it sounded like crap.
Of course! Haven’t I always said that mathematicians invent the best musical instruments? The sample “Leger-5.wav” (the short composition) sounds like it would be excellent for a movie soundtrack, maybe in a dream sequence. Now write the screenplay.
Just wait until someone like Alex Lifeson of Rush to gets his hands on a production model of this thing. I bet if he had one for a couple of months, he would write new music to suit that one particular instrument. And it wouldn’t sound like anything you have ever heard before.
Just like computer tweakers, it will take some tinkering and experimentation before musicians can fiqure out the best way to play any new instrument. I would say this thing has definite potential. We will just have to wait until it gets into the hands of the experts and then wait a year or so.
Looks like it would need a massive tweak before anything worth listening to emerges. Just because it makes a really cool wave form on an “O” scope does not mean anybody would want to listen to it. On the flip side, the right fingers can coax exquisite sounds from a garbage can lid, anybody who’s watched LinkTV can attest to.