Musical Houses -- I have been wondering what it would be like to build a
tidal generated water-wheel hurdy gurdy w/ a 20' rosined wheel.
this cross posted from a friend that I sent the link on the musical house --
The Aeolian harp concept always stuck my fancy, so one summer while
sitting on top of a BC mountain as a fire lookout, with more sky than
earth in the view, the ever present breeze set thoughts of the Greeks
into action. Tacked half a dozen 50 lb test mono-filament fishing lines
to the eaves of the lookout roof, and stretched the ends over the wooden
railing of the narrow deck around the building. Used big tomato juice
cans filled with rocks to apply tension to the ends of each line,
adjusting the weight with rocks until the strings began to sing. Then I
found it was just as easy to nail a big piece of fire wood to each line.
The building was secured to the mountain top by tensioned cables running
out from each corner to rock anchors, and fastened to and matching the
tension of another cable stretched all around the inside of the building
just below the pyramidal roof. The structural result was that the
entire wood frame of the building was in constant heavy compression,
creating a stressed membrane of each wall and the ceiling. When a
breeze set the strings in motion, the entire building acted like an
amplifier, but you could only hear the sound when inside.
It was amazing! A gentle breeze created low low pitches from the 6' to
8' free length of the strings. Low murmurings of quiet evening air
soothed the soul beautifully as harmonics rippled slowly up and down the
musical overtone scale. If the breeze caused the hanging cans or
pieces of firewood to swing, string tension changed and pitch wandered
up and down. As a wind picked up, the primary pitches went up, first
to a loud attention-getting human voice pitch and then to a screaming
banshee sound that let you know the real power of air and vacuum-driven
weather.
After living all day and night with musical sounds driven by the natural
environment, normal building life ever since has seemed dull and
unconnected to the outdoors. Even though it was done in the early
1970's I still miss the gentle warmth of a low pitched quiet evening
lullaby. Sometimes, with a mid-speed wind, the collection of strings
and their overtones sounded like a Bach fugue played on an organ.
Every house should have an Aeolian harp built in.
--
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