Building a harpejji

 I'm going to try and build a harpejji! 😄

Jacob Collier on a K24 harpejji

If you're not familiar with the concept:

It's basically a really big fat guitar neck that's played (tapped) from the headstock side with two hands. 

Sprouted from the brain of Tim Meeks of Marcodi who took a long hard look at the Chapman Stick and the Starrboard.

I think it's an awesome concept.I really admire the thinking and perseverance they employed to get to where they are with this.

It's:

Like a keyboard:

- Two handed playing to accompany yourself.

- Able to play dense and close harmonies.

Like a guitar:

- Expressiveness from real strings.

Like none of the above:

- Isometric layout! This must be such a turbo charge for beginner musicians grappling with music theory. And quite frankly also for more experienced guitarists/pianists for whom the wonky layout of their instruments keeps tripping up their harmonic game, if you will.

See:

https://www.marcodi.com/pages/learn-more-copy

"So you're definitely going to buy one?" Well, I'd like that. Would be a nice way to support their business, but man, it costs a f**k ton. Thousands. Marcodi are the only manufacturers and sellers. Of course they patented the heck out of their beautiful idea, or it would slip from their fingers before they could move out of the garage. They're a small American business, it's not made in China. Of course it's not gonna be cheap. 

Second, I'm actually not that happy with the way it sounds. It's like some acoustic guitars can be on piezos. Just a really thin sound, kind of void of character. I wanna find out whether magnetic pickups are a sh*t alternative to their piezo pickups. I foresee some potential issues with crosstalk maybe. But worth experimenting on.

And third, I got some neat ideas I wanna try to float with this thing. 

- Active EQ including resonance (Q) control. Done this once on a guitar with low Z pickups. Having been inspired by Helmut Lemme's wonderful book on electric guitar lore. You can literally turn a low impedance pickup into any other pickup. Of the same form factor, that is. You still cannot mimic the slim sensing area of a single coil with a humbucker, or vice versa.

- Per string overdrive/distortion. For sweet harmony leads man!

This doesn't (yet) strike me as a hard build. I have a fair amount of amateur luthier chops.

Quite a lot can be reverse engineered from online resources. Although, surprisingly, I did not find many "diy" attempts to learn from. (cinematic, brooding sound of imminent foreboding..)

So, lots of experimenting ahead. Specially in the electronics department. Stay tuned..