TINES & ECHOES

This looks like a stringed instrument, but the strings are secondary. The primary vibrating bodies are small metal tines mounted on the bridge, tuned to a chromatic scale. The player plucks them in kalimba-like fashion. The tines have a short, sharp, almost instantaneous sound. Their impulse creates a sympathetic vibration in any string segments that happen to have roughly the same frequency – and with so many randomly tuned strings present, it’s likely that some will. As a result, the short, sharp sound of the tine is followed by the natural tuned reverberation of the strings – an attractive combination.

In the audio clip, Tines & Echoes is accompanied by the cubist bass and a soprano cooler guitar.
The video clip linked below was created for the Tines and Echoes samples library, available from SoundIron. Another video featuring Tines and Echoes can be seen here, starting at 5:57.