A picture of a glass of wine with various sizes of glasses, including an elegant Armanica glass.

Glass Armanica

by Arman Bohn

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Description

Here is my initial version of the Glass Armanica VSTi.

It is a sample based recreation of Benjamin Franklin’s rubbed glass instrument known as the Glass Harmonica, Armonium, Hydrocrystalophone, or Armonica (whew!). I ended up changing the name to be more in line with the official name of Ben Franklin’s invention.

I originally planned to recreate all three octaves of the real instrument, but I ran out of sufficiently large wine glasses. If I come across any enormous goblets in the future I may release an enhanced version of the Glass Armanica.

The samples were created by filling wine glasses with water and tuning them with a chromatic tuner to the appropriate pitches (drop by drop). I used an Oktava MC-012 cardioid condenser microphone running into a Seventh Circle C84 Preamp.

https://armanbohn.com