New answers tagged string-instruments
5
It’s referred to as a contour, or forearm contour.
2
There is such an instrument which is called ‘kanklės’. This instrument is Lithuanian National instrument and has 29 strings and levers as well it is very similar to a harp. You can put it on your lap but we also use a stand for it. We change tonalities with the levers on the side. Originally, it is a folk instrument but musicians developed it and we started ...
1
This is dangerously close to "feng shui" territory. But I suspect that, rather like the infamous Bose 900 series speakers, his point is that 3 or more instruments produce enough interferences that your neuroacoustical interpretation is that of "smoothed" sound. When there's only 2 instruments the beat frequency (difference of the two pitches) is much ...
4
Maybe you are looking for a Zither:
Here more traditional:
2
yazh is an instrument which is vertical standing 1 or 2 or even more players can play that single instrument
it is quite big for 3 player standing as well as available smaller fits a lap
actually the same instrument is horizontally placed inside a grand piano
yazh has many varieties and many sizes and many strings, it is one of the oldest instrument of ...
2
Check out the Chinese guqin:
It can be played on table or lap: http://www.silkqin.com/04qart/qinplay.htm
I love the harmonics and barely audible string slides employed in its music.
3
While not held in the lap, take a look at the koto - Japan's national instrument.
Every string has a separate bridge which can be freely moved for tuning. I think I've seen an ensemble where part of the musicians moved the bridges during pieces, but I'm not sure about it.
6
Dr Phil Brissenden, who lectures in Popular Music at Salford University, expresses very similar sentiment to you about the pros and cons of piano and guitar playing and has dedicated a considerable portion of his life to the invention of an instrument that bridges the gap between the two. The resulting creation, while not fretted, is a great deal like what ...
10
While you said "not a lap steel" in your question, I did want to make sure that you were aware of the console steel guitar and the pedal steel guitar. These two instruments are significantly evolved from their "lap steel" roots, and fulfill two of your main criteria: they have many more strings, and they allow you to look at the fretboard while playing &...
5
The chapman stick is not played on the lap, but otherwise fits most of your criteria. It's a 10 or 12 string guitar-like instrument, usually played by double-handed tapping.
8
Except for the small number of strings an Appalachian dulcimer seems close to matching what you want. But, really it seems like the harpejji in @Shevilaskovic's answer must have been invented for exactly the hybrid you're looking for!
Also, you may already know about the mechanism for the clavichord, but in case you don't it has hammers that strike the ...
10
Aside from kids' toys, there are the zither and the autoharp; the latter being a zither with chording capabilities.
Moving over a bit, there's the hammered dulcimer.
Moving over a lot, there are many Chinese traditional stringed instruments which are played horizontally. You can find variants with 4 to a couple dozen strings.
27
There is something like what you described and it's called harpejji. It's not placed on your lap, but on a stand in front of you, but it is pretty much what you described:
The instrument aims to bridge the gap in sound and technique between the guitar, bass guitar, and piano. The playing surface has an isomorphic keyboard ...
1
There are 3 components to making a nice sound on the violin.
Contact point
Bow speed
Bow pressure
The contact point is whereabouts on the string the bow makes contact. It should be somewhere between the bridge (the light coloured thing that holds the strings up) and the fingerboard (the long dark thing that provides counter pressure when you hold a string ...
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