The Lattice Harp: A New Hybrid Instrument And Controller

This paper describes the Lattice Harp, a new musical instrument which functions simultaneously as an acoustic instrument and a hardware controller. The Lattice Harp consists of two overlaid, perpendicular planes of strings which are electrically connected to a microcontroller. The microcontroller detects when two strings are touching and treats this data as a button being pressed. Furthermore, each string has an individual piezoelectric pickup, which allows for the strings to be separately amplified and processed while providing a method for continuous control. The pairing of normally separate performance paradigms affords new, interesting, and unexpected performance techniques.