What Mike seems to be describing is not like a harp in the traditional sense but more like one of those weird southern horizontal string thingies.
No it was vertical, the convention I was using was X axis - left / right, Y axis - up / down, Z axis - towards you / away from you.
I would have the lasers pointing down for two reasons:-
- Safety, less chance of getting one in the eye.
- With the light sensors pointing down there is less chance of ambient light interfering.
So basically I was saying that with a laser line generator each string would have several sensors in the Z axis so that as you pushed your hand further away from you you would cover up successively more sensors.
if you play higher or lower on a 'harp' string (laser beam) you want to get a different octave.
While playing a real string at different points will excite a different mix of harmonics it does not change the fundamental of the note. Some harps have a small leaver on each string to change the tuning by a semitone so the harp can be set up quickly to play in any key, but otherwise it is one string per note. Electronically you can easily have an octave shift key.
I have made a few things with harps:-
