MIDI Dulcimer

In early 2001 I decided to try to build an instrument. I settled on a hammered dulcimer partly because I thought that the relatively simple acoustic design would make a good first project. I built the original instrument from a kit (lumber and plans) that I found in a local music store. I also built a simple folding stand.

The first incarnation of my hammered dulcimer. The white strips of paper were there to help me learn the tuning (three interleaved bridges, each tuned diatonically).

Then in early 2003, I began to consider the possibility of automating the dulcimer. I had just begun to experiment with statistical models of musical performance and wanted a way to render model output that sounded better than MIDI samples. I did this with a MIDI-to-parallel circuit which allowed me to map a midi note value to each of the dulcimer's 35 pairs of strings. I built a steel mounting frame which could be attached to the dulcimer's stand. This frame supports 35 rubber-tipped solenoids which strike each of the strings.