This piano is made entirely of ice lolly sticks, and it’s pretty cool
13 January 2021, 11:13 | Updated: 13 January 2021, 11:48
One musician proves that anything is popsicle.
You’ve probably never looked at the stick of your finished ice lolly and considered its musical potential.
But not all of us have the mind of musical whizz, MrMash.
Taking a handful of old popsicle sticks, the musician put his DIY skills to the test to achieve one simple goal: to make a playable piano solely from ice lolly sticks.
By drilling the individual sticks to a larger piece of wood in a double keyboard layout, and monitoring the pitch of each ‘key’ after testing them with a swipe of his finger, MrMash was able to perform a tune.
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How to make a piano from popsicle sticks that actually sounds good
“Learning this took me ages...” an on-screen caption reads, as the pianist taps out a rendition of the Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)’.
Despite the invention bearing similarities to a keyboard, MrMash explains in the video description that the instrument would actually be classed as a “plucked idiophone”.
“Since a piano has strings stretched between two points it’s a chordophone, further categorised into the zither family,” he writes. “This creation wouldn’t even be in the chordophone family due to no strings.”
Whatever its instrument family, we can only respect the meticulous planning and trial-and-error that brought the popsicle piano to life. Bravo, MrMash.
