We’ve got to state it… these tubular bells noise awful! They don’t truly have a tight pitch center so they sound really out of tune to us. however we believe that’s the failing of the instrument itself as well as not the work which [Tolaemon] did to automate the instrument.

There are three primary parts to his project. The first, which is shown above, adds a hammer for every bell. The hammers are hinged, with one side being pulled by a solenoid in buy to strike the bell. The second part of the hack likewise utilizes solenoids, dampening the bell’s capability to sound by pressing a felt pad up against the bottom of the tube. The final part of the job brings everything house by adding MIDI manage to the hardware.

The clip after the break provides a great introduction of the different features including some preprogrammed playback in addition to direct manage of the instrument utilizing an electric keyboard. This reminds us of that scratch-built solenoid xylophone.

[Thanks Jordi]