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taika-kim β Zither 4
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Published: 2008-01-23 15:35:01 +0000 UTC; Views: 950; Favourites: 18; Downloads: 13
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Description
One of a set of three kantele-like zithers I made recently.It's got 14 strings, and it's made from scraps from the boat builders... Oak, ash & heat treated birch.
Finish with roslagsmahogny (?sp in English?), a mixture of turpentine, tar and linseedoil.
The sides have a carved inlay inspired by ob ugric peoples, the Khanti and the Mansi (also called the Ostyak and the Vogul in the past). You can't see it in the pic, but the design on the other side is a negative from the one you can see here.
All carving & surface tooling made with my selfmade chisels, oh the love
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Comments: 16
lovely job on the inlay.
I'm faving this so I can remember to show someone your gallery, and because its awsome.
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Thanks 
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Beautifully done!
Call me dumb, but is this plucked or hammered?
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well, it can be played either way, but usually they are plucked... we do also have the "stick kantele" that people play with a stick, but I never saw one so I'm not sure if they are built in a different way... and anyway this is not a traditional design, it's my own.
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beautiful piece! soundboard, box, ornaments... instrument.
we've ten stringers planned next, but at least i'll be keeping an open box design... my friend's quite keen on building a koto though, any chance you might know a decent link in english on that?
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No... But I guess you could get an approcimate by placing bridges so far on the soundboard that you could bend notes by pusing down beyond the bridge, and if you can't have silk strings (I think that's what they use), you might just want to damp the strings somehow, maybe by squeezing them between some soft material so that the vibrating length is not in contact with any hard materials on the instrument.
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i have a load of pics, maybe one day...
but there is not really so much to it, the tricky part is the stringing, otherwise you can have pretty much anything for the body and soundboard.
any old wood box would do, I just wanted to make it a bit more in the traditional way.
but in a strictly practical sense, the world is already full of thin walled containers and rigid plates... actually I'm more interested in making instruments out of dumpstered materials.. but since the school is for historical crafts...
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Good point. Im going to have to go looking around and see what I can find.
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[link]
[link]
[link]
Start at those sites, Dennis Havlena has great instructions for making $5 instruments, altough the graphics on the site are maybe a little confusing for the beginner... were for me at least.
And also there's The book, Musical Instrument Design, which must be the ultimate resource for the home instrument builder:
[link]
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Wooo! thank you for the links! I used to have a book like that once but lost it during a move. Going to have to try a few of thouse.
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Hello! I'm musician too (Keyboard, bass , guitar and perc) and I really like all your instruments!
I would like to hear the sounds of your instruments!
Good work!
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nice to hear! I make electronic music, can't play any of my instruments apart from the occasional improvisation.
but I plan to use all of these in the future in my compositions... and I might be tempted to make some soundbites if I have too much free time at hand sometime soon (not likely, though, phew!)
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I play sometimes Berimbau and i would like to make some mixes of traditional and Γ©lectro dub.
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Can you see the climate change, btw? The pic was taken near the end of January :/
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