{"id":174,"date":"2023-02-08T14:00:42","date_gmt":"2023-02-08T21:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/?p=174"},"modified":"2023-02-08T14:00:42","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T21:00:42","slug":"introducing-the-zhaltar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/music\/introducing-the-zhaltar\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing the Zhaltar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I started designing this new instrument at the beginning of 2022 and finally have a playable prototype. The name <b>Zhaltar<\/b> comes from the Slovak name for a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Psaltery\" target=\"blank\">psaltery<\/a>. It&#8217;s played by plucking the strings, and it&#8217;s fully chromatic, with a range just over 5 octaves (C2 to C#7). The zhaltar is a solid-body instrument and a MIDI controller.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/eSalterio1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/eSalterio1.jpg\" alt=\"Zhaltar prototype\" width=\"600\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-175\" srcset=\"https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/eSalterio1.jpg 3891w, https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/eSalterio1-300x72.jpg 300w, https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/eSalterio1-1024x246.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 3891px) 100vw, 3891px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The strings are colored the same as on a piano. The right-hand and left-hand set of strings are each arranged as a whole-tone scale, with the left hand set being a semitone higher than the right. This means that once you learn a melody, you can easily transpose it by moving it up or down a string.<\/p>\n<p>The strings and pickup contacts are made with <a href=\"https:\/\/aquilacorde.com\/en\/early-music-strings\/historical-harps\/\" target=\"blank\">Aquila Nylgut<\/a> to give the sound a lute-like mellowness. The MIDI controller functions are still in development. I&#8217;ll post some musical samples, as soon as I teach myself how to play the thing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I started designing this new instrument at the beginning of 2022 and finally have a playable prototype. The name Zhaltar comes from the Slovak name for a psaltery. It&#8217;s played by plucking the strings, and it&#8217;s fully chromatic, with a range just over 5 octaves (C2 to C#7). The zhaltar is a solid-body instrument and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-instruments","category-music","category-technology-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176,"href":"https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnkorchok.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}