Tritare: Strums Like a Guitar, Rings Like a Bell.

Canadian mathematicians Samuel Gaudet and Claude Gauthier created a new "guitar" based on a network of three or more strings that can give "exotic overtones that a single string doesn’t":

Gaudet notes that a conventional, two-anchor musical-instrument string generates a fundamental sound frequency plus harmonics. Those frequencies are two, three, or other-integer multiples of the fundamental frequency.

The tritare generates not only those harmonic overtones but also nonharmonic ones, he says. Listeners typically hear such nonharmonic overtones from percussion instruments—for instance, bells or gongs—which vibrate in more-complicated patterns than simple strings do.

Depending on how each note on a tritare is played, the sound can include a few or many nonharmonic ingredients, Gaudet says. So, he adds, the instrument offers "a richer sound than does a classical stringed instrument."

Link | Sound clips – via J-Walk Blog, Thanks Adam Beane!