Swizzle stick thumb piano
Submitted by SynthGear on July 14, 2010 – 10:34 pm 2 Comments
Robert Patterson Collier, a musician and DIY-er has built a thumb piano (or kalimba, mbira, lamellaphone, likembe) with coffee swizzle sticks for tines. And guess what – it sounds fantastic.
Here’s what it looks and sounds like, the audio is routed through logic and processed with delay:
Robert’s thumb piano was made pretty much out of a wooden box and an electrician’s grounding strip. You can make one yourself if you want, just take a look at the step-by-step DIY instructions on instructables.
Robert actually has a CD made entirely with his thumb pianos, entiteld “Lamellaphone”. You can grab it on cdbaby right here.
I used to have one of these when I was traveling in India but it seemed boring after a while. I guess that is because it was unplugged!! Ohh the things I could have done if I had one like this!! making it electric is simply genius. Thank you for the original post.
hi, I would like to express my appreciation for what you have built, and the music you play; the video is very nice, giambattista marcucci