King of Strings: A large-scale, interactive guitar that produces real sounds and can be played by more than one person at the same time.

 A lot of hard work and critical thinking went into making this sound installation. Throughout the semester, busted ideas generated new ones. The King of Strings started out as one simple idea and turned into a larger dream. The project first started out as a small scale iteration with one string connected between two pieces of wood. The hard part was finding the right material that would be used for the strings. Guitar strings and wire would be tested first. The guitar strings and the wires did not give off the sound we wanted so we moved on to something else. Surgical tubing worked best because it is stretchy and durable.  The next step was to build a contraption to house all the components. Two boxes designed in Rhino modeling software and laser cut were used as final prototypes to house the strings, sensors, and technology. A lot of technical work was put into this project.Vibration sensors, an Arduino board, breadboard, speakers, wires and amplifiers had to be connected in a certain order for the strings to make sounds. The chord sounds were created digitally using Max MSP. The sensors attached to the strings would vibrate generating different sounds for each chord. This project was built for anyone to enjoy, regardless of whether you are a musician or not. If you like music and like to generate sound by the touch of your fingers put your mind to it and who knows what you can make