play, not the one that is currently
playing.
Playing the MIDI lyre is done
with a plucking type of motion that
is a quick touch and release. If you
touch a string, it will not sound until
you release it. Touch sensor
reliability can depend quite strongly
on skin resistance, so if you have
particularly dry skin, you might find
that your touch is not always
detected.
To solve this problem, you may
need to moisten your fingers
slightly before playing. In fact, it’s
quite useful to keep a damp sponge
or towel next to you while you play.
You can play single notes or chords
because the instrument is fully
polyphonic.
The other way to play the lyre
is to strum it by dragging your
fingers across several strings. The
instrument works very well in this
mode. (In a future article, I’ll
describe a simple modification that
turns the MIDI lyre into an
autoharp for playing strummed
chords.)
Putting It All Together
Now that you have a working MIDI lyre, you need to
package it all up in some way so
that it’s easy to transport and play.
There are any number of ways
you can do this, and provided you
still have access to the strings,
buttons, and ports, you can
package it as you choose.
I like to make the instrument
look like a lyre. The easiest way to
achieve this is to mount the
instrument on a U-shaped piece of
MDF, Perspex, or ply as shown in
Figure 7. I find 6 mm is a good
thickness for the sheet material
because it’s rigid enough without
being too heavy. My MIDI lyre is
shown in Figure 7.
I call this a “skeleton lyre”
because I keep the electronics
exposed so I can easily experiment
and make changes. For a more
robust instrument, you can cover
the electronics apart from the
buttons and ports.
The shape I have chosen is
roughly based on the Saxon lyre
from the seventh century C.E. that
was found in a burial site at Sutton
Hoo, England.
Figure 8 shows the plans for this instrument if you’d
like to copy it. NV
■ FIGURE 8. Plans for the MIDI lyre
frame that are loosely based on the
Sutton Hoo Saxon version.
July/August 2018 33
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