Fontys Academy of the Arts aspires to have its own orchestra with custom-made instruments. However, the conservatory does not have its own self-made instruments. The conservatory has a lot of talented musicians who can guide the prototyping and building of a custom-made instrument with their musical knowledge. They do not have the practical skill and engineering knowledge to build a custom instrument themselves.
Project description
The assignment is to build a custom instrument either from the ground up or by adding upon existing ideas. Together with the musical knowledge of the conservatory, an instrument must be built to start their catalogue of self-made instruments for the orchestra. The idea is to have multiple instruments in a couple of years, so that the students of the conservatory can write their own performances with these instruments.
The group has set goals they want to achieve before the end of the project. These goals are as follows:
• To build a guitar with multiple top plates;
• To have adjustable acoustics with a great-sounding result;
• To design live audio effects;
• To have a mechanically sustained note;
• To create better ergonomics for the guitar player;
• To build a self-distinguished instrument;
Project results
This project set out to answer whether it is possible to build a tone-mixing guitar for the conservatory of Fontys Academy of the Arts. Based on the concept development, realisation, and verification described in this report, it can be concluded that this is indeed possible. The group has designed and built a guitar with multiple top plates, made from different materials, which can be mixed dynamically using exciters. This approach, inspired by the Transacoustic guitar from Yamaha, made it possible to alter the acoustic character of the instrument without directly changing the sound signals coming from the strings.
Looking back at the project goals, most of them have been achieved. The guitar has multiple top plates that can be mixed with adjustable acoustics, and live audio effects, such as a low-pass filter, reverb, and delay, can be applied to the sound. The electrical verification showed that the electronic stack is able to pick up the sound of the guitar, process it, and play it back through the exciters while keeping the sound clear and recognisable as the original instrument. The software verification showed that the latency between playing a string and hearing the effect through the exciters stays within an acceptable range, with a calculated latency of around 6 milliseconds and a measured latency between 16 and 33 milliseconds. The mechanically sustained note has also been achieved and was tested successfully on the prototype, and confirmed by the client during play.
Overall, the project shows that it is possible to acoustically mix the sound of a guitar by combining multiple top plates with exciters, while keeping the instrument controllable through live software effects. The prototype and the verification carried out on it demonstrate that the underlying concept works, even though the final instrument is not yet fully finished on every level. The recommendations in the following chapter describe the steps that could be taken to further develop the software, electronics, and mechanics of the guitar, so that the conservatory can continue to build on this work for their orchestra of self-made instruments.
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Acknowledgement
The student project team (Daan, Eliot, Micha and Tijn) would like to thank the musicians and technicians of the Conservatory of Fontys Academy of the Arts for the inspiring cooperation with us. Special thanks go to our project tutor Iman Koole, the complete teaching team of Minor BeCreative, and also to the Makersplayce at Fontys Nexus for their support during the project.