Introduction
A Glass harp is an instrument that consists of a number of wine glasses filed (to some part) with water. Sound is produced by sliding wet finger on the top edge of the glass. Pitch depends on the water level inside the glass.
This project aims to make autonomous glass harp with controllable pitch (to some extent). Since this can be done by changing water level inside glass, a voluminous object (in this case a ballon filled with water) is submerged into glass by a small servo motor.
This project also takes different approach to playing method � glass is spinning and "finger" is stationary.
Details
Spinning stand is made mostly from old printer parts and a metal disk from hard drive. Spinning motor is slowed down with simple ne555 PWM circuit. "Finger replacement" is made from a piece of wet cotton.
The pitch can be changed by changing the water level inside glass. This is accomplished by submerging water filled balloon in it. Balloon height is changed by small servo motor driven by Teensy board. Servo position can be changed by sending OSC message from my phone (by Wifi) to the laptop, which then sends command to the Teensy board by serial link.
From my experiments, balloon with water gives best results (minimal timbre change). Other things I tried were plum and peach . I didn't try to replace balloon with maybe plastic ball.
Demo
Photos
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