INVENTION XI

This is the instrument I play the most and carry with me everywhere during the warm months of the year. This was built to be a very efficient and easy-to-carry travel instrument that could do a lot for its size, and is currently in its second incarnation as it has been taken apart and improved upon. 

It is a design that I have experimented with on a few instruments only for myself so far using hollow bamboo as a neck that doubles as a resonant tube for a reed or woodwind instrument—in this case, the neck houses a shakuhachi-style end flute fully playable in two octaves. 

As a stringed instrument it is a 32" scale fretless instrument with four strings that can be plucked or bowed. They are set up like a banjo's strings, with the highest string at the thumb, and then ascending from low to high. This also allows the highest and lowest strings to be bowed at the same time in a unison two octaves apart. 

The fingerboard is Indian rosewood with cocobola side stripes. The body is African mahogany with an inlay on the back repurposed from old found furniture made from unknown woods. It has a mylar resonant head and the body has acoustic reverb from a network of springs and resonant plates housed within. It is amplified with a diversity of tones from a controllable blend of two piezos, one located directly under the bridge and the other on the resonant springs themselves.