No, the current state of the luthier and instrument-making industries is not good. Remember, Gibson, back in 2011, got busted for using illegally-finished Indian wood, no doubt infringing on your innate right to rock.
Some of us, though, have an insatiable desire to build our own instruments, of any kind of madness we deem fit. And thanks to the Yellow Jackets down at Georgia Tech, you can even get paid cash for your craftsmanship.
The Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta remains the foremost contest for all sonic inventors.
In fact, 23 instrument inventors from 14 countries are competing for a top prize of $5,000 (with $10,000 in other prizes) and recognition of their design, performance and engineering ingenuity from the ACC's best school.
Last year's winners included an iPhone choir, an electromagnetic suit and light-emitting blocks. And among this year's finalists is the Chitravenu, a sliding flute that inventor Uday Shankar hopes will be adopted into the Indian classical music forefront.
Another 2014 finalist is the OP-1, a sleek portable synthesizer care of Swedish techies Teenage Engineering.
The Tree Guitar, a concoction from Yuto Hasebe of Japan, is a small rectangular board with a wild, antler-like branch protruding from it, which conjurs up complex electronic timbres.
And finally, the BubbleSynth by Daniel Novy of the good ol' U.S. of A. is a device that "translates motion tracking and blob detection data collected from floating soap bubbles into sound."
The Guthman contest is sponsored by Georgia Tech's Center for Music Technology, the School of Music and the College of Architecture--held on February 20 and 21.
Here's but a preview of the awesomeness.
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