This New Acoustic Instrument Sounds Just Like A Digital Synth

Turkish musician Görkem Şen is turning heads around the internet at the moment with the viral uptake of a video depicting him demonstrating how to play a self-designed instrument known as the yaybahar, which makes crazy-digital-sounding noises despite not requiring a watt of electricity to operate.

An entirely acoustic contraption despite its range of possible noises, the yaybahar consists of percussive membranes, long, coiled springs, and a fretboard. It can be played in a variety of ways, being hit with mallets in different positions to create atmospheric, synth-like soundscapes, or bowed on the fretboard for a polyphonic string-section-in-space-style aesthetic.

Check out the video below — in it, Şen starts off with a bit of arbitrary noisemaking, progressing to a full-scale demonstration of its abilities that is sure to raise questions over just how he even conceived of such a thing in the first place, much less got it to work so damn well.

What the hell, right? Pink Floyd would be frothing at the mouth.

Although his instrument is only just reaching wider awareness, Şen invented the yaybahar at least a couple of years ago; he has a pair of demonstrative tracks available on his SoundCloud page.

OK, so it's not going to light up the Top 40, but you have to admit that it's pretty freaking cool, and definitely more than a few steps above "Coke-bottle maraca" as far as homemade instruments go.