We have already seen countless Lego inventions—but have you seen a genuine microtonal guitar made out of Legos?
If not, you’ll definitely enjoy the ingenuity of this awesome musical project.
As it turns out, there were already a handful of videos online showing off the abilities of a “Lego guitar.” But Tolgahan Çoğulu, a Turkish classical guitarist and his son, Atlas, noticed that none of those acclaimed Lego guitars made the actual fretboard out of Legos.
Instead, they were standard wooden guitars with their bodies made out of Legos. So, they came up with a brilliant idea—to make the full fretboard out of Legos as well!
Atlas inspired his father to start this project two years ago when he made a replica of his father’s actual microtonal fretboard.
Unfortunately, Atlas’ Lego collection alone wasn’t quite enough to create it. So, Çoğulu started to ask help from friends to help him make Lego fretboard baseplates, including round and square frets to finish the project.
But before going any further, you may be wondering: what is a microtonal guitar?
It was Çoğulu who designed this type of guitar in 2008.
Generally speaking, a microtonal guitar is one that has more possible notes to play than a standard guitar. These are called “microtones,” or notes that are relatively “smaller” than the standard notes used in Western musical compositions. In other words, those notes have a smaller interval relative to the scales we’re used to.
Though these guitars have existed before, his own revolutionary idea and design actually won first prize at the 2014 Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition.
In another one of his YouTube videos titled “The Major 3rd Problem of All Guitars in the World,” he explains how the guitar’s tonal structure usually works and why it bothers him. It is one of the reasons that he was inspired to design the Adjustable Microtonal Guitar.
Fortunately, his experiments with Legos were a huge success!
After Atlas and his father finished their customized Lego guitar, they then experimented to see just how well it would work.
As it turns out, it works just about perfectly! They tested it with some classical pieces and it works like any other guitar. What’s more amazing is that they could use Lego bricks to replicate the idea of the movable frets.
Although their guitar’s body is a standard wooden guitar body, if they could attach their fretboard to a Lego-made guitar body, it would become the first full custom-made Lego microtonal guitar ever!
Fortunately for the world, Çoğulu documented his whole performance on January 30, 2020.
Since it was posted, the video got 761,000 views and 32,000 likes in just seven days. And since then, YouTube commenters have definitely shown these guys some love!
But one YouTube commenter put it perfectly:
“This is what genius looks like simple, obvious (once a genius explains it to you, ofc), and to the point. Damn, you could even attach some bump-less LEGO’s and make that guitar fretless just that easy. Wow! We’re all living in 2020 while this good man here, he is living in 4020 already, no joking! Honestly: excellent idea this is why I’m subscribed to your channel.”
Both Atlas and his father truly deserve to be admired as geniuses with their groundbreaking Lego idea! check out their full performance in the video below:
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