The final project for my Art Foundation year, I'm very much interested in guitars and musical instruments in general so I wanted to create something with the capabilities of creating sound but in a new form, rather than traditional instruments. The stairs in my college building had these panels filled with holes which made me think of slotting strings through them so they would be playable.
Unfortunately slotting strings through these holes wasn't enough tension to hold the strings so they could be plucked to make sound. So instead I used some wood and guitar tuners to make it so that strings could be slotted through and held at a strong enough tension that they could produce sound.
The strings alone were fairly loud enough to hear, and this was made slightly louder and more atmospheric with the echo of the stairwell. Overall I think it was a great place to create sounds but to make the strings that bit louder I stuck a piezo pickup on the panels on the stairs and connected it to a guitar amplifier.
Above is a sound clip of some people playing around with the strings.
The piezo pickup can be spotted clipped onto the panel just above the strings. Piezo pickups work by picking up vibrations coming from anything they are placed on, which meant the stairs could be used like a percussive instrument as well as a stringed instrument.
Another sound clip of the strings being played
I also added some varying lengths of pipe, which worked almost like a xylophone, however they didn't really produce enough vibration to be picked up by the Piezo.
A longer clip of some people playing with the strings
The sounds produced by the staircase were really atmospheric and haunting, it could be very fitting for a soundtrack to a horror film. Because of the connection to a guitar amp that was pre-loaded with lots of effects, the tone and the kinds of sounds you could produce varied greatly which made it a surprisingly versatile 'instrument'.
