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How do you make one? Apparently there is such a thing as a bowed glass instrument. Does anyone know what it's like and what it's all about?

MIDI programme 92, in case you're wondering.

DIY with glasses properly filled, or this
http://coolmusicinstrument.com/glass-harmonica-invented-benjamin-franklin-cursed-heavenly-sounding-instrument

So it's a "glass harp" then. Basically just a whole battery of cups filled with water (or not) rubbed with wet fingers, right?

Ri-i-ight...

http://finkenbeiner.com/GLASSHARMONICA.htm -

"Glass Harmonica prices start at $7,880.00"

The silly thing is way more expensive than most hardware synths...

Re copyc4t’s comment, this piqued my interest: http://vimeo.com/15955954

One way of making a crappy version, perhaps. From 1:07 onwards they start to sound a bit less ear-bleedingly bad. I just hope those old superstitions about crystallophonic instruments causing psychotic depression are untrue...

jamesabdulrahman wrote:
... I just hope those old superstitions about crystallophonic instruments causing psychotic depression are untrue...

Maybe some truth in that superstition : I heard that playing the glass armonica can cause the disease vibration white finger, which can be agony , ( being in agony causes depression ).

Well, that'd be because of lead in 18th-century glass?

It can sound melancholic for certain, e. g.

http://www.solarstudios.net/Music/Mus_E2M9.flac

Glass thickness/quality might have something to do with sound causing earbleed... Also pitch (430 Hz would be a lot nicer, Thomas Bloch has a harmonica tuned to that).