A NEW musical instrument, which is attracting lots of interest in the music world, will be played at Bratton Music Night on Friday 3rd September by Tony Seeger of Bratton, who designed the instrument.
Tony performed with his new instrument at the Royal Institution in London and has been asked to play on the soundtrack of a film.
Tony’s seraph harp guitar is played in a similar manner to a guitar, but with 20 strings, the instrument has a much larger pitch range, making it much more versatile. Tony, a flight engineer by profession, conceived the basic idea for the harp guitar in November 2005, while sitting in an aircraft in Cologne, listening to Michael Hedges playing a Dyer harp guitar on his MP3 player.
After making a series of sketches with extensive revisions, followed by full size engineering drawings, Tony then went in search of a guitar builder to bring his dream to life, and the project was taken on by luthier Nathan Sheppard.
From the initial idea, the production of his guitar took around 2 years. It was a long and complicated process, but one that produced results. “As the work progressed towards the finale, it was like watching a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis of the body mould and the workshop,” said Tony. “I’ve now got the prototype and the first production, and there’s another three being made at the moment.”
“There are some other harp builders who base their design on older designs, but the shape of mine is unique, and it’s a lot more modern.”
Since then, Tony’s seraph harp guitar has made a number of appearances, not least at a symposium at the Royal Institute in London at a symposium. Tony has also been asked to play his instrument to make the soundtrack for a film due to be released later this year.
The seraph harp guitar will be played at the Bratton Music Festival, which starts at 7.30pm at the Jubilee Hall.
More about the instrument can be found at www.seraphharpguitars.com/
