The world's first player violin

You know we won't rest until every last instrument can play itself, right? Luckily, we can now safely add ye olde violin to the list. The QRS Virtuoso Violin surely sounds way better than any of our more, uh, human endeavors with this instrument. Can somebody call up Peter Jackson and tell him we've found a new musician for his ragtime band?

[Thanks, Mike]

[Jason Coyne @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

This is not the worlds first player violin, although it may be the first generally commercially available player violin. The House on the Rock, in Wisconsin is full of player violins, and player cellos etc.

Also, here is an instument called the violano that was produced more than 100 years ago and was a player violin. http://www.musicalmuseum.co.uk/violano.html

This instrument is not strictly playing the violin in any case, it only plays on one string (making chording impossible) and it doesnt use any "fingers" to change the note, it varies the tension in the string to change pitch. So it looks like a violin, and probably sounds something like a violin, but is played totally differently.

As opposed to the other player violins I mentioned, which actually are used like a normal violin (and in many cases, ARE violins, that just have a robotic player)

[Jimmy C @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

If you've ever been to the House on the Rock in Wisconsin (so I'm from the Midwest, sue me) -- they've got an entire player orchestra. Pretty creepy, actually.