a new instrument, "Omniwerk"

[Jonte Knif]

I had quite a summer. I took part in designing and building this beast, Omniwerk, which is a combination of Lautenwerk and Geigenwerk (or as many know it, viola organista)

I draw the whole beast in Rhinoceros, assembled parts of the mechanics and made strings, but the main builder was my friend Jukka Ollikka, who lives and builds harpsichords in Prague.

Ilpo Laspas payed the concert and as you can perhaps hear he improvises in a crazy french organ tradition.

There is only one set of strings, therefore the mechanics is complicated and there are quite a lot of compromises is acoustic design.

Sound is quite matte in the "lute" mode but very bright and nasal in "violin" mode. It is also a very loud instrument. (compared to a harpsichord or lute for example)

We have some doubts whether we are going to improve the design and build more of these, but who knows. This was "just for fun" although I have to say that "fun" was quite far away when there were a couple of days to the concert and the instrument didn't work...we didn't sleep the night before it was transported to Finland. Concert was eventually sold out and everything went fairly well. You *can* hear that this is not the easiest instrument to play, but OTOH Ilpo had only 2 days to practice and this was a prototype without time for tweaking for example the strings or the belt which acts as a bow, everything had to work directly from plans. Pretty stupid in a way but the only way for us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49wb47OtgJY&feature=youtu.be&list=PLUMNRl7edsQ7OAGNi-4BGfRAivZZNiCVq

Some baroque music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95CeYIYAbB8&list=PLUMNRl7edsQ7OAGNi-4BGfRAivZZNiCVq&index=8


-Jonte

 

[Jonte Knif]

Some pictures:

https://picasaweb.google.com/jonte.knif/Omniwerk

 

[bernbrue]

wow, thats a real masterpiece.  Since I´ve studied classical music (organ) I really love the music in the video. I´ve never heard such an instrument before. Well, Leonardo da Vinci would be happy to see his plans realized. Congratulations for this beautiful instrument and for your tube synthy as well!!
Bernd

 

[hitchhiker]

Cool!  In your design, is it possible to back off the level of the cello?  The mix for me is rather bass strong but maybe the mic was too close?  I love baroque music and I think you really have something here.  I love how the  instrument captures the attack and tone of the baroque strings.

 

[Jonte Knif]

"cello" is bass strong. We should have used more than one belt and belt speed to make it more even. Now it is barely playable in the treble.

Balance between cello and lute might be hard to correct entirely, but we could make the bridge+soundboard less effective to lateral string movement.

 

[12afael]

I did some search at youtube and at the page of the festival searching for a video of it, it is nice to finally see it in action.
the chello keyboard is someway sensible to the keyboard pressure?

I bet Lauri is happy with it.