| My youngest son had a
school project to make a musical instrument, and brought home sheets of
paper that demonstrated how to make four different kinds, an aerophone, a
membraphone, a chordophone, and an idiophone. He drew up plans for an
elaborate "Kiss"-style guitar, complete with horns and flames. I
thought that was too hard, but I did get an idea for a Pikachu chordophone.
So, I searched online and found a good picture of Pikachu, modified it to
move the tail up between his ears so it would make a nice handle, and
printed it out, overlaid on a graph of squares (printed the paper twice,
once to get the squares, another to get Pikachu), so I could scale it up.
Then I found a piece of scrap 1/2 inch plywood and drew the graph lines and
then drew out Pikachu, and then cut it out with a jig saw. I used
plywood from the cut out scraps to make a resonation chamber, which I nailed
onto the back, centered over Pikachu's mouth. A little sanding, a
little primer, then some paint, nails and rubber bands, and what do you
know, my son had a Pikachu chordophone. Even though the rubber bands
get tighter and tighter as the space between nails gets further, they don't
sound any different, strangely enough. But my son doesn't care, so I
don't either. I could have done a lot more, to include using better
plywood, a scrollsaw instead of a jigsaw, and filling the voids with putty
to make it super smooth, but it was just a weekend project, and I wanted my
son to do some of the work. He insisted on putting "Pokemon" up on the
tail, and I have to agree that it did add to the effect. Anyway, for the
obvious copyright reasons, I can't offer these for sale, but this is an easy
thing to do if you have even basic skills and a jig saw and some sandpaper.
|
