Free Republic

It looks and plays like a piano, but it sounds like a string quartet — and it took 500 years before anyone built it. Leonardo da Vinci’s flight of fancy in designing a hammerless piano, called a “viola organista,” has come to life half a millenium after da Vinci designed it, thanks to a Polish concert pianist and musical engineer. It couldn’t have sounded any better in da Vinci’s head (via Brad Thor and Dan Gainor): A bizarre instrument combining a piano and cello has finally been played to an audience more than 500 years after it was dreamt up...

Amazing to watch - fun to listen to....

Flying robot quadrotors perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and the debut of an adapted guitar built from a couch frame. The quadrotors play this "couch guitar" by flying over guitar strings stretched across a couch frame; plucking the strings with a stiff wire attached to the base of the quadrotor. A special microphone attached to the frame records the notes made by the "couch guitar". 1:40 video at the link

AWESOME VIDEO. IT SAYS IT TOOK THEM OVER 13,000 HOURS TO MAKE THIS. WORKING EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR 8 HOURS A DAY WOULD BE 4 YEARS 5 MONTHS AND 18 DAYS! WOW. AND THATS INCLUDING WEEKENDS! READ DESCRIPTION BELOW! Turn your sound on for this. Read this first, then watch. This is almost unbelievable. See how all of the balls wind up in catcher cones. This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa .. Amazingly, 97% of the machines components...