What happens when you want to play two instruments at the same time, but only have two hands? You let electronics do the work for you, of course. ITP student Aaron Sherwood has done just that with the Glockentar. Using the tuning machines from an acoustic guitar, he fabricated his own stringed instrument. Since the steel strings are conductive, Aaron turned them into switches. Whenever a string is plucked, a corresponding glockenspiel bar is hit by a solenoid.

The glockenspiel is controlled by an Arduino and to add a little bling he created a visualization element made in openFrameworks, then sent to MadMapper via Syphon. For more details and the Arduino code, check out the entry on Aaron’s project blog.