A crazy site appropriately named Oddmusic has revealed a totally new musical instrument called the Harmonic Generator. Its 64 piano strings are tuned into 32 chromatic notes (so just shy of 3 octaves' worth). The strings are stroked by bristle brushes attached to motors that are activated by the standard piano keyboard. Lest you thought the mechanical paint brushes were weird, read on.
No, even more bizarre are the guitar pickups: The device uses 12 of them, focused on each of the 12 notes in the musical scale, feeding back what they hear to a speaker transducer positioned at one end of the massive "resonance hull."
Unfortunately, Oddmusic doesn't yet have sample tracks from the Harmonic Generator, which was created by a guy named Isac Zal and was not, as I had initially imagined, a joint effort of Tim Burton and the late Dr. Seuss. The site does at least describe the sound, calling it "a symphony inside the belly of a whale." Somehow, I think that would make ole Theodore Geisel proud. [Oddmusic via Make]