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SPRING_HARP

                                             May 13, 2023


    An instrument I built some time back-- perhaps a
    musical instrument, but there's room for debate
    on that point-- uses a number of metal coil
    springs (or the garage door variety) arranged in
    a conical shape.  They come together at one
    point at the bottom, connected to a long piece
    of threaded rod I can tighten up to increase the
    tension on all of them.  At the top, each of
    them are connected to a ring by a turn-buckle,
    which gives me some individual control over the
    tension on each spring.  A metal "stiker" is
    supended by a cord in the middle of all of the
    springs, with a piece of plastic (the "sail")
    mounted on it higher up: I point a sweep fan at
    the sail to get the striker to randomly swing
    around, bouncing around between the springs in a
    pattern that's unpredictable, or nearly so.  An
    accoustic guitar pick-up is mounted near the
    tensioning threaded rod, and that I typically
    connect to a cheap guitar practice amp.

So, it's a mechanical gadget with a
chaotic automatic mode of play.  But
then, you can also strum the springs
manually, or with an implement-- I've
been known to use a plastic halloween
pirate sword as a pick, myself.

I've never made an effort to tune the
springs to any scale-- I'd rather not
have it sound like just another
musical instrument with a slightly
different tone.


I considered making a video about it...
in outline:


Spring Harp-- a musical instrument

(1) Quick demo
(2) What was I thinking?
    College radio. KZSU.  Live noise/music.
    (a)  Wind chimes with a fan pointed at them
         (often with an echo loop)
    (b) The microphone booms that had long springs
        made cool noises

    Combine these two:
    garage door springs played automatically.

    (A) DJs are busy.  Doing a live set on the air
        while also doing other things, it helps
        to have an automatic mode.

    (B) Order is Nice, but chaos is beautiful.

                                                       CHAOTIC_SOUND

Re-thinking the video idea, I think
I'd cut the lecture, and go with:

  Extreme closeup of striker on springs, plus sound.

  A closing slogan on screen:

        Order is nice, but chaos is beautiful.

    Alternately: make it an opening slogan,
    then you can do a looong video.

                                   RANDOM_CONNECTIONS



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