Arduino Lego Tannerin

The Tannerin is a musical instrument that is played by sliding a marker along the length of a wire or pad. This produces a pure sine wave tone, which can extend over as many notes or octaves as you wish, always in a smooth (i.e. portamento/pitch bend) fashion. It was used on the Beach Boys hit, "Good Vibrations."

With everybody building light theremins at the moment (myself included) I thought I'd better release an Instructable for the Tannerin.

Step 1 The base

Begin by building the longest base possible. When sat in the middle, you should be able to easily reach either end. I built mine from Lego - just because I can. Then stretch a piece of nichrome wire across the entire width, and finish up by tying each end around a screw. This will help dissipate any heat that it gives off. Keep this wire taught. Measure the resistance of this stretch of wire, as this will give you an idea as the range, and granularity, of the instrument. Mine was 176 ohms, across 1.2 meters.

Comments

[Coffeebot]

Nice! I'm getting my first Arduino in the mail soon...and I've always wanted a theremin! I think I know what one of my first projects is going to be :)

[amando96]

so am i :) but my first project is a light follower robot :) wich i can do without an arduino, but it isnt so accurate...

[raynman217]

I'm an Elec Engingeering major freshman, and we just made a light following robot, called light spiders, so much fun to play around with!!

[tudgeanator]

Very cool.I'm thinking of doing a similar thing,but using a pot. at the end of the wire and having the 'wand' permanentely attached the the wire ( so when you move your hand it pulls the wire an so turns the pot. Just a thought,as i have so many projects at the moment...

[Sam the Wizer]

I had the same thought.  I'll probably try it this weekend, I'll let you know my results.

[golden22]

how do i write this program?

[DELETED_yoghurtsniffer]

(removed by author or community request)

[tudgeanator]

No.Theremins were invented by Leon Theremin and are not touched in any way-you control the pitch and volume by how close your hands are to the two ariels.Where a this instrument is controled by moving one object along the wire to vary the reistance and therefore pitch and this instrument was definately not invented by Leon Theremin and so is not a theremin. ps.This comment was in no way meant to sound harsh or insulting-it's just as i read through it it sounded (in my mind) a bit harsh but i couldn't be bothered to re-word it.

[LinuxH4x0r]

Cool!

[joejoerowley]

Cool! Great Instructable! Never heard of this. Thanks Joe