
The Guthman Musical Instrument Competition - lerch
http://guthman.gatech.edu
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zhemao
Wow, as both an electrical engineer and avid amateur musician, this is pretty
fascinating. The first place winner from last year is pretty cool.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRxr3ZWVjM4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRxr3ZWVjM4)

It appears to be a very sophisticated voice synthesizer. (And of course they
made it sound like a Hindustani raga singer).

It seems like most of the contestants are various electronic instruments. But
personally, I'd like to see more innovation in acoustic instruments,
particularly wind instruments (my bias as a wind instrument player). The not-
yet-invented musical instrument I'd most like to play would be something like
the Chinese Hulusi, except made out of metal like a western concert flute, a
saxophone-style fingering system on the melody pipe, and adjustable slides on
the drone pipes. This would allow a wind player to play melody + chords
without accompaniment and without requiring a tight embouchure (seriously,
maintaining embouchure for an extended period of time is really tiring).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulusi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulusi)

~~~
breadbox
Unfortunately wind instruments are one of the hardest instruments to
manufacture from scratch, due to the unreasonable complexity of figuring out
where the holes need to go to get a certain note. (String instruments have all
the advantages there.)

