No Strings Attached: Discarded Musical Instruments Get New Life

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No Strings Attached: Discarded Musical Instruments Get New Life

Close-up of the digital theremin violin, an 1805 Seidel violin outftted with a wire coil, alternating pole magnets, speakers, and other electronic parts.

Photo by Evan Cantwell

An engineering professor and an art professor have embarked on an ambitious project: They want to create an orchestra of robotic gadgets made of cast-off musical instruments that will autonomously perform an opera bearing a topical social message.

“Totally doable,” says Daniel Lofaro of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.

“That is my dream, that is what we are working toward,” says Edgar Endress, an associate professor at Mason’s School of Art in the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

The instruments used in the Narrative Machine project were deemed beyond repair—but not beyond their usefulness to the Mason professors.

The orchestra is a small band consisting of two guitar towers, a horn fower, a cello drum, a piano guitar, and a digital theremin violin. The instruments were among those donated to the Mason Community Arts Academy’s (formerly the Potomac Arts Academy) “Instruments in the Attic” program, in which refurbished musical instruments are loaned to community members and Mason students in need of an instrument for music studies.

The digital theremin violin was the frst contraption created by the team in mid-December. An 1805 Seidel violin was outftted with a wire coil, alternating pole magnets, speakers, and other electronic parts. With the push of a button, a bow is stroked over the violin’s bridge, creating a decidedly un-violin-like sound. Computer software turns it into music. No strings are plucked on the cello drum. Instead, linear actuators strike different parts of the cello’s fretboard and body, producing percussive sounds controlled by a musical instrument digital interface (MIDI).

There are two guitar towers among the instruments on display. Actuators, connected to an electric keyboard by means of a MIDI, strike the strings of a well-used Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. The sound is amplifed by a large megaphone atop the tower.

When the full orchestra is ready for its operatic debut, Lofaro says there will be 16 guitar towers looming over the stage, playing alongside an assortment of other colorful, Dr. Seuss-like hybrid instruments. Some of the instruments were designed with the help of students who participated in hack-a-thons. Endress says there may be as many as 50 different instruments on stage. “Imagine all the extension cords,” he adds with a laugh.

The music, he says, could be created from sources refecting topical social issues. “Any data can be turned into music,” he says. “The libretto could be about housing or displacement, and the data could come from a housing project or from people telling a story about homelessness and displacement. That’s my dream.”

––Buzz McClain

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