The Martinot

This is my bachelor’s thesis.

Inspired by the legendary Ondes Martenot, I designed my own musical instrument to cap off my studies and simply named it “Martinot.”

As you can easily see, it consists of an 18-note glockenspiel and a guitar effects unit. A look inside would reveal a sound funnel beneath the glockenspiel, housing a high-quality condenser microphone. This is directly connected to the guitar effects unit to distort the sound of the glockenspiel as needed and desired.

You don’t have to play the glockenspiel to coax unique sounds out of it. Thanks to its sensitive microphone, you can use any kind of sound—such as tapping or scraping the instrument, shouting, or whispering—to create interesting effects; there are few limits to your creativity.

The main focus of this project was on the craftsmanship of the wooden casing as well as the overall style of the individual components. For example, the curved “outer shell” consists of 16 layers of cherry wood veneer to ensure ideal stability and durability.

In a second version, the two cables (power supply and audio signal) were to be replaced by jacks in the housing, so that cable selection and replacement would be possible at any time.