The Arachnophone

Conjuring another instrument ...

The Arachnophone
I plan to build a large-scale musical model of a spider web, using varying widths of piano string as the “threads.” The fundamental characteristic of the Arachnophone is that striking one string affects every other string on the instrument, much in the same way that a fly landing on a web excites all the threads, sending information to the host spider.

I envision eight primary strings making up the foundation of the web. These strings will be connected to a shared ring in the center of the web; when one string is struck, it will passively vibrate the remaining seven strings (much like it would occur when a fly lands on a spider web).

There are also the secondary strings found on a spider web; when a primary string is struck, these secondary strings will likewise vibrate (to varying degrees based upon their proximity to the struck string), but they will be under a different set of parameters in their vibrations. That is to say, they will be being stretched rather than simply vibrating back and forth. This will cause the secondary strings to slide up and down in pitch creating a tremolo effect. Either that or it won't work at all ...

There will also be the layered resonance chambers. The primary and secondary strings will each have their own unique soundboard and related chambers. The primary strings will be bridged as one unit and will transfer their vibrations to the top soundboard, which will be made of wood. The secondary strings will be bridged all the way through the primary soundboard (without touching it) and will excite a metal soundboard. The two different materials will create vastly different tonal qualities.