The ancient Celts had a distinct culture, which is shown by their very sophisticated art work. The Hallstatt culture and especially the later La Tène culture are characterized by a high aesthetic level, which must have also left traces in Celtic music and musical practices. Music will surely have been an integral part of this ancient cross-European culture, but with only very few exceptions its characteristics have been lost to us.

Audio d-touch is a collection of applications for real-time musical composition and performance, with very special user interfaces. The collection includes a drum machine and a sampling sequencer, both are controlled by spatially arranging physical objects on an interactive table surface. Each object represents a sound, and its position with respect to the surface is mapped to certain playback parameters.

This robot is a bowed bass instrument with two strings of equal length, covering a range of nearly four octaves. The construction of the bow mechanism is a further development of our first designs in this direction, implemented in Flex, our singing saw. The bowing speed, and consequently the loudness, can be controlled as well as the direction of rotation. Bow pressure can also be controlled independently for both strings. The time plot shown further below gives the details of the control possibilities. Rosin is continuously applied to the bow material through a rosin holder wherein the bottom wheel of the bow mechanism rotates. The frets are realized with strong electromagnets equipped with tangents. They are moveable, such that the instrument can be prepared to play in different tuning systems, including just intonation. The resonators for the strings are constructed from thin stainless steel pots, welded on a heart shaped sound board. The metallic and harsh sound the instrument produces when bowed was intended. Softer sounding, almost etheric string sound, including all flageolets, can also be produced using the e-drive mechanism. This machine is fully programmable and can work under midi control.

FULL SUSTAIN MODE - like no other sustainer; infinite sustain on every string, at every fret position and at any volume. You may have heard sustain before but not with this power (we call it “Vo Power”) and clarity.

The Janko keyboard is a musical keyboard layout for a piano designed by Paul von Janko in 1882. Based on the premise that the hand can barely stretch more than a 9th on the piano, and that all scales are fingered differently, Janko's new keyboard had two interlocking 'manuals' with three touch-points for each key lever. Instead of the traditional row of white and black keys, the keyboard has an array of keys.

Exotic Guitars

The instruments that you are seeing were constructed using classical instrument building techniques - and are elaborate sculptures - they are not merely airbrushed paintings on the same old guitars.

Glasbead is a multi-user persistant collaborative musical interface allowing players to manipulate and exchange sound sample files and create a myriad of soundscapes and rhythmic musical sequences.

In culmination, 3 simultaneous voices were produced spanning 3 octaves and 3 rhythmic tiers. Each voice was controlled by two hamsters: one that was responsible for adjusting the rhythmic qualities of the melody and another that modified the note sequence. With all of these elements in combination, an output was produced with very musical qualities.

The Austrian musicologist, Erich Moritz von Hornbostel (1877-1935), and his German colleague, Curt Sachs (1881-1959), proposed in 1914 a system of classification for musical instruments which has been criticized and changed in details through the years, but never supplanted.