Hurdy Gurdy
 

Not sure this has been seen / discussed before but I was taken by this mechanical and acoustic instrument.

No glue. Compression parts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=bQGgFKdjV_U

That's fascinating. I need to look into how this actually works.

Hardy Gurdy
 

Every time I see one of those I think of that Spencer Tracy film “Captains Courageous”:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=quynEWf4CI4

Carter Gravat, lead guitarist/multi-instrumentalist for the Virginia band Carbon Leaf had a custom hurdy-gurdy made that allows note/chord changes (the older ones were single chord/key) and has a pickup system. He uses it in their live show for one song, really fills out the instrumentation.

oh' lord no,
all that clonking and sqeaking

A couple of points:

First, the video stopped about three quarters of the way through, so I can’t be certain that the sound of the hurdy gurdy wasn’t recorded at the very end, but for what I did see, the music playing was some generic triumphal music not played on the hurdy gurdy at all. What does that tell you when they’re trying to convince you to join in on a Kickstarter campaign to put a musical instrument into production when they won’t let you listen to the music it produces?

My second point is that this 3D printed version of a hurdy gurdy, cool as it may be, is not a full-sized hurdy gurdy: it’s closer to half size, three quarter size at most. Which might be cool in a certain way, but it makes me question how functional the resulting instrument will actually be.

In other words, this is kind of an intriguing gizmo, but it seems more like an exercise in what you can make with a 3D printer than a viable musical instrument that you could play on even a semi-professional level.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

I'd never heard of the Hurdy-gurdy before, but looks like they go back several centuries, originally. The Swedish Nyckelharpa (key harp) must be somehow related too

You’re correct on both counts. Hurdy gurdys were popular in the 1500’s, perhaps earlier, as well. I’m pretty sure that Brueghel included hurdy gurdy players in some of his village scenes. If not in his work, there are definitely other painters from that same era who did.

As for those Swedish folk instruments, the nyckelharpa and the slightly more archaic silverharpa, the keyed mechanism that creates the notes is virtually identical to the one on hurdy gurdys. The main difference between them is that on the hurdy gurdy the strings are driven by a wheel, while on the nyckelharpa the strings are bowed.


whm

This is probably a good representation of how a Hurdy Gurdy sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUPWxjZY6mQ

A resource about the Hurdy Gurdy, from, who guessed:
http://www.hurdygurdy.com/

I had provided some other links that may still be active on Hurdy Gurdy forums, etc. in a thread over at the Chiff & Fipple forums:

http://forums.chiffandfipple.com/vie...p?f=11&t=93993

Bernunzio just got in a nice one:

https://bernunzio.com/product/j-d-mo...y-gurdy-24433/

(Made by hand, though.)

Patty Gurdy, showing that Gurdy playing can be quite comely:





Bob

Check out the first 4 minutes of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSbFwhM7YjY