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Merkaba Electronics has announced that its String Armonica electro-acoustic synthesizer is now available.

The String Armonica is a hybrid synthesizer that generates sound acoustically using 12 chromatic strings, controlled by an internal polyphonic wave generator. The video demonstrates that the strings can be played by plucking them, and also played via MIDI.

The instrument is based around 36 transducers, two exciters per string and one per string used as a pickup. The developers explain that the wave generator “shoots discrete synth waveforms into each string and resonates the various octave harmonics, similar to if you yell into a piano, and that resonates the harmonics.” But The String Armonica does this precisely, under MIDI control, and using electromagnets to stimulate the strings instead of sound.

The String Armonica offers 48 notes of full polyphony, which sound via the strings via harmonic resonance.

A live demo, showing how the String Armonica can be played via a MIDI keyboard:

As you can see from the videos, the fact that this is an acoustic synthesizer means that its sonic possibilities are constrained by the physical instrument. In other words, it’s always going to sound like a 12-stringed instrument.

But, because the strings are played by MIDI-controlled electromagnets, it can be played in ways that would be otherwise impossible. For example, you can sustain individual notes and then crescendo or decrescendo them, using keyboard or organ technique, and combine that with plucks and mutes on individual strings.

The instrument has true stereophonic output, via 12 individual pickups for each string.

The String Armonica is available now, in limited quantities, for $2950, with free shipping in the US. An initial batch of 20 instruments is planned. Contact them via their website for more information or to pre-order.

This is how synthesizers worked in the victorian age

In the video, David Pantalony, Curator at Ingenium: Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation, demonstrates a 19th century vowel synthesizer.

The instrument is a Hermann von Helmholtz synthesizer, invented in the 1860’s and built by Rudolph Koenig. The Helmholtz synthesizer was designed to explore how additive synthesis can be used to create complex sounds from simple ones, and how sine waves can be combined to create different timbres, vowel sounds and more.

Helmholtz’s synthesizer generates sounds using a series of tuning forks, each pitched to different frequencies, made to vibrate using electromagnets. A keyboard is used to control the volume of each pitch, letting you play the pitches individually, or combine them as overtones of the fundamental pitch to do additive synthesis.

While this is clearly a synthesizer, it was designed primarily as a scientific instrument, rather than a musical one.

At Superbooth 2023, Korg Berlin was sharing a preview of the Acoustic Synthesis_phase5, a prototype acoustic synthesis instrument.

In this video, synth designer and Korg Berlin CEO Tatsuya ‘Tats’ Takahashi shares a preview of the unusual synth with Reverb’s Fess Grandiose.

While most electronic musicians think about synthesizers as instruments that generate sound completely electronically, in the 1850s, the German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz created devices that could synthesize sound electroacoustically, using an early type of additive synthesis. The Helmholtz Synthesizer was designed for scientific research, though, not musical performance.

The Acoustic Synthesis_phase5 builds on similar ideas, but seems closer to the work of Paul Vo, who created the Moog Guitar and the Vo-96 Guitar, instruments that implement forms of acoustic synthesis with guitar strings.

Like the Helmholtz Synthesizer, the Acoustic Synthesis_phase5 is based on electromechanical control of tuning fork, and lets you mix overtones to shape sounds. But Korg’s device is designed to be a musical instrument, so it can be played chromatically. Because it’s built around resonating tines, the instrument can have initial attack qualities similar to a Fender Rhodes. But it can also sustain notes indefinitely and it can feedback like an electric guitar.

While both the Vo-96 Guitar and Acoustic Synthesis_phase5 give you granular control over the harmonics of the sounds they generate, the range of sounds that the instruments can create is constrained by the physical qualities of the instrument. So the VO-96 can create a wide range of sounds, but they all sound guitar-like, and the Acoustic Synthesis_phase5 creates sounds that have a bell-like quality that’s similar to a Rhodes piano.

The phase5 is a prototype, so no details on specifications, pricing or availability have been announced at this time.