The music-tech internets lit up this week with news of Slawomir Zubrzycki’s construction of one of Leonardo Da Vinci’s imagined inventions : the Viola Organista :

LEO Systems Easi-Bow 2000

Several people posted it on our FB page and tweeted us about it in the space of a few hours, and it is clearly an appealing concept : an instrument that bows a string in a very controlled, predictable way, just by pressing a key – rather than the daunting chaos of the violin or the cello. I bet painters wish he’d invented an enigmatic-smile-a-tron as well.

What people may not know is that there are other versions of this idea around; a recent example that leaps to mind is the Wheelharp by Antiquity Music :

Probably the closest DNA match would be the Hurdy Gurdy, the difference being that all the strings on a Hurdy are always in constant contact with the turning wheel.

The Hurdy Gurdy from the Conservatoire Collection

If Da Vinci had Kontakt..

And, as Dan pointed out to me, our own Bowed Piano  (included in the Xtended Piano collection) is a direct virtual equivalent. Using the sustain bow articulation you get the same kind of bowed sound, controllable by a MIDI keyboard. The bowed piano sound is looped in Kontakt, so it directly mirrors the effect of the wheel turning in the Organista.