Kalichord

The Kalichord: An Electro-Acoustic Plucked String Model Controller

Daniel Schlessinger Music 250B Project Wiki

Overall Description:

For my 250B project, I extended upon my 250A mini-instrument which I call the Kalichord.

The right hand plucks piezo tines that are fed directly, at audio rates, into a physical model. The left hand plays basslines, using an array of momentary switches (aka buttons, for those who prefer clarity over tech-speak). There is a third degree of freedom that comes from either sliding the hands horizontally (first prototype) or rotating the two halves (second prototype). These motions are mapped to various things such as pitchbend, register changes (ie moving up or down an octave), distortion, virtual pluck position, or perhaps even more physical parameters or note variations!

Here is an diagram of the flow of sound/control:

Photos:

Here is the original prototype, from 250A:

Here is the current prototype:

Different, no?

Plucking:

The novel aspect of the Kalichord is that the audio from the piezo tines is fed directly into a physical model of a string, for a tight coupling between the physical control and the modeled sound: