Sitar Control : controlling the timbre of a stringed instrument using electromagnets

I used to be part of a small collective called Trublion.
A group of four engineers / tinkerers / musicians, we would mostly work on augmented instruments. "Augmented" as in augmented by electronics and algorithms. These instruments are not new, and example range from the electric guitar to the Theremin, to name a few.
My favorite project in the collective was a musical instrument that uses electromagnets to control the timbre of its strings.

Later, during college (at Mines Paris Tech), I was given the opportunity to study this instrument in an applied math lab (CAS).

Conveniently for this blog, I wrote my report as a website !

→ My report

Some highlights :

• I made a pretty fast algorithm to analyse in real time the timbre of a known frequency sound (harmonics analysis at 48kHz) and some nice experiments on the sound of a piano
• I built a nice addon to my CNC mill to scan the static magnetic fields and compare permanent magnets and electro-magnets and some cool 3D vector fields visualisations

As with most projects, I continued working on it, but this will make for a nice post some time later.