A guitar that tells its life story through interactive patterns

[Carolan]

Things are moving on quickly with the carolan guitar now. Neck attached to sides and a delicate interactive pattern etched and inlaid in the cutaway.



We open to (polite of course) suggestions as to what to do with it. More details on the latest blogpost as ever.

[Wolfram]

Why not mark the chladni patterns of your guitar onto the outside of the top - then you will be able to see how it sounds!

[Carolan]

What a great idea. I had to look up Chiadni patterns. Having seen them I agree that it would be lovely to work them into the design of a guitar. In fact, their general topological structures would make them pretty much perfect outlines for designing Aestheticodes. Then we could create decorative inlay that both reflects the acoustic properties of the instrument while also enabling people to listen to recordings or even access more technical info.

Sounds like we're going to need to design another guitar … any takers for building it?

[Carolan]

A blogpost with a difference today, focusing on the design of the software app that goes along with the Carolan guitar. We illustrate how we can configure our interactive decoration to point at different websites as a way of iteratively prototyping what the app should do. Don't panic - we'll get back to guitars in the next post when we'll reveal our striking design for the soundboard.

[Carolan]

Our final interactive pattern is for the soundboard and its a striking and complex design that features multiple codes, a mixture of inlay and soundholes, and that also aims to respect the sonic and structural integrity of the instrument.

It took well over two hours to etch, but luckily you can see the design emerge in just over two minutes by watching the video on our latest blogpost. This is one for people who like seeing valuable tone wood in laser cutters … (even if you watch nervously like we did!)

[Carolan]

Given the intricate know work on the soundboard, we've had to figure out another way of giving access to the inside of the instrument. We've opted for a removable sound hole on the top.





It's held in place with four small magnets, but you can lift it out with a fingernail to get at the batter, volume control and internals. The decoration is a scannable pattern that loads the user manual.



Interestingly, it also lets the player change the tone that they hear - leaving it in for a bit of feedback or playing with it out to hear more of the instrument's voice.



Suspect that this has been done before and would welcome pointers to similar designs.

More details on our latest blogpost.

[Carolan]

We've completed the build of our interactive guitar. You can see Nick christen it with its first song on the latest blog post. or follow the whole history of the design and build at www.carolanguitar.com.



Mind you, this is just the beginning of the story as we hope that it will gather thoughts, stories and songs as it finds it way into the world and into the hands of players over the coming months.

[Carolan]

The Carolan guitar has been for it's official photo shoot. Full details at out latest blogpost. In the meantime, here are a few images …







Including some of us testing that the interactive codes scan properly …

[Carolan]

Lulo Reinhardt - virtuoso Gypsy Jazz guitarist and grand nephew of the legendary Django - composes a new tune on our guitar and records his thoughts about owning and decorating guitars. Watch the videos in out latest blogpost.