Musical Instruments Week, Day 4: The Light Fingered (Video)

It's Musical Instruments Week here on the SEAS News & Events page. Each day, we'll feature a different instrument created as part of the course Musical Acoustics & Instrument Design (ENAS344/MUSI371), taught by Larry Wilen, a Yale senior research scientist and design mentor in the Center for Engineering Innovation & Design, and Konrad Kaczmarek, a composer and lecturer in the Department of Music. The students presented their instruments May 4, 2016 at the CEID in the John Klingenstein '50 Design Lab.

Today, we feature the Light Fingered, an instrument created by Jack Olivarius-McAllister (Alex Dobovoy is the performer in the video). An Applied Physics major going to med school next year, Jack said it was important to him that his invention have a medical component to it:

"I chose to make the instrument have a light-based interactive medium, as it requires no force, which means that those with disabilities are able to play it even if they can no longer generate the force required to play a piano. This was a really important project to me because music is so intrinsic to being 'human.' Furthermore, it is purely an analog circuit-based instrument, which means what you see is what you get -- there is no software or computer interface."