A Sympathetic Nail Violin? 

500 years from now students will learn about this instrument in a middle school music class and invariably one child will always raise their hand to ask why the base of the instrument is called the "footrest."

"I really don't want to practice this a lot to be able to play this." - Me about any instrument I've ever wished I could play.

You really nailed that instrument

he could do an entire Legend of Zelda soundtrack with this instrument

I like how most of the instruments you make end up sounding awkward on their own but when you layer them in a song you make each one sound amazing. A truly unique talent!

The german translation of the video title says "a violin out of likeable nails", idk if that is correct lol

I wonder if brass nails would sound warmer. Or maybe if you polished the nails to a fine mirror polish with a polishing wheel and some polishing compound. You never know!

imagine the wheel of a hurdy-gurdy rotating, and an arangement moving nails against it. if you have a melody of nails on a second wheel you might also build a device that plays a melody by turning the second wheel against the first.

Nicolas - you, uh, nailed it!

I've been playing the saw for 50 years. Now I can also play nails! YES 👍

As a violinist, watching that bow go across the nails makes me crying in an unimaginable way. But he put alot if work into that and it sounds cool!

I wonder how it would sound with a bass bow and bass rosin. Nails probably need more grab to get the lower frequencies. Just a guess

Ling Ling would be proud!

Tbh playing it with fingers on the nailheads looks to me like a more intuitive & natural way to play this than with a bow. Maybe you could try making a layout of nails that is centered around that, so you can play it sort of like a piano?

When will TwoSetViolin take a look at this thing ...?

The instrument is cool and I really appreciate how you edited the construction to match the beat of the background music.

I’m sure Inon Zur would love to use this in his compositions for Elder Scrolls 6, it honestly totally fits his music-making tastes, i.e his love of non-traditionally using instruments, such as bowing a guitar for example.

Back in the medieval times, you would have been the king's personal instrument inventor.

Make your bridge curved. Make the neck longer and more narrow. You may also make it curved. That's so you can run the bow between the bridge and pegs while hitting one string at a time. It will be faster and easier transitions between notes.

It’s like a pan flute got busy with a train horn

freaking awesome, I heard about this nails in this video. the tuning is a bit inpracticable but still fucking awesome 😍

The edit on these videos is amazing. This instruments are amazing. Damn! even this guy is amazin, he has a particular charm that makes you want more videos with him making and playing those weird instruments!

Wood worker and musician? Never thought that would work together so well

Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I love this video. You are a nerd and I love that. 【Side note】 : I also like your voice.

Not gonna lie, I was hoping it was an instrument you could tell all your problems to.

I wonder if aligning sympathetic nails according to the overtone series of the played nail's fundemental might give a richer timbre?

Imagine if those nais were b20 alloy, i guess it would improve sound quality by a lot

Ok, I was waiting for him to sprinkle 🧂 salt down his arm and onto the instrument once completed.

3:04 You left your mask on the sanding machine - stay safe man, you've got only one lung! Wait, nvm, you've got two, well then.

An awesome folk instrument with rich possibilities! My great respect and best wishes!

Gosh I really feel bad for that nail Violin. One could say: "I feel sympathetic for it."

One scene: Gentle voice and some notes Next scene: *Screaming sounds of anarchy*

I imagine that the nails can also be hit similar to a Xylophone and it would also sound great.

You may have noticed that you will not excite a lower sympathetic note to ring well when playing a higher octave, as it would be a multiplication. You can only excite an equal or higher octave to resonate sympathetically (equilibrium or division). Also if you want more and easier to play nails, you may have to rethink the layout, and I can only imagine how good 2 courses of 12 strings would sound like, and perhaps a microphone mounted inside, or just outside the sound hole! Also: "Tonewood" is a myth! Go for harder woods, really any stiff materials on everything but the sound board, which should not be soft, but just somewhat more flexible, to make sure the energy goes where you need it for best projection. "Density is also a misnomer, because although most stiff and heavy materials are dense, it is not a given! Soft materials can also be dense and absorb a lot of energy, rather than reflecting it. It's a common myth that if the whole instrument resonates well it will sound better/louder: Not true. The stiffer everything but the sound board is, the less energy they take from the soundboard at a loss. Add to that, strings and rods carry linear waves which translate well into radial waves, the problem is they don't convert back into linear waves very well, as much as E/pi^2, but that is an ideal figure that relates to a perfectly circular soundboard with the source (nail or string) attached to very center, and in only two dimensions, so you may be loosing exponentially more in conversion. A friendly luthier and geek. (

this is SO cool. I have recently moved..but if I were at the old house..I WOULD be in the shop trying to make one. Maybe in the future. I love making music from non-ordinary things

Build a cheap piezo disc pickup for it as well could be fun. And costs abiut 50cents

someday maybe SOMEDAY it would be greatly recognized as a mix/semi very classical wood plucking,tapping, and bowed instrument. maybe after 200 years onwards after they see and reclaim the instrument and it will become the country’s PRIDE. just saying 😂✌️✌️✌️

Nice work. Looks like it was a fun build. This is a first cousin to the Waterphone. If you are thinking of playing with the design a bit more, you could follow that lead and aim to refine it for resonance and not necessarily overall tuning.

I suggest sound dampening, like seen on a vibraphone.

ok so your telling me you can get flute sounds from nails!!!!.... AMAZING!!!!!!!!! :D

I feel like such a new and unique instrument needs a bow designed just to play it. Really cool.

So versatile, so many ways it could be played, even as a sort of drum to tap on. So much possibility of making creative, beautiful music.

Je sais pas pourquoi je suis là. Je suis pas musicien, je veux pas construire d'instrument chelou. Et pourtant. En vrai t'as juste l'air sympa Nicolas, ça m'a fait resté, en plus de la curiosité.

Je découvre ta chaîne par hasard et c'est très sympa ! Je vois que tu fais tes croquis sur une tablette, c'est une tablette graphique ? Ou une simple tablette avec un logiciel bien précis ?

Send it to twoset they will play it both at the same time.

Just wanted to say you got the bow a little too tight. If you loosen it just so that you can slide your pinky through you’ll get a nicer sound :)

Replace the bow(s) with one or two hurdy gurdy wheels. Another configuration could be horizontal hurdy gurdy wheel with steel "nails" that could be tilted to touch it.

I just wanted to comment that RU-vid translated automatically the title to spanish with the other meaning of nails, and I was: "is he gonna use the nails in his hands"? 😆 Great job with that isntrument

8:37 - If you play this part at 1.5x, it sounds like a cartoon character eating an apple very quickly.

I suggest that you rub lemon oil into such worn wood next time and it might help protect your instrument from cracking once such big nails are in.

It's technically on the C major scale, but with D as the home tone, making it D Dorian.

someone make 7:43 a meme

Ah yes, a violin made of funny fingernails

Kalimbiolin or Violimba? Love it!

At 7:10 I immidiately thought "Aah, it's a Nail Kalimba as well!~"

I just found you today and I love what you are doing. Great video. I think I will steal from you. I think I must steal from you. My gosh, GREAT WORK!!!

J'ai expérimenté un truc dans le genre il y a quelques années _(attention image de qualité moyenne)_ ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XmBwWvpjdCk.html

0:13 I am guessing that's a normal bow, right? The very same one would use to play a regular violin.

@7:44 Daffy Duck got bottled up in this nail violin 🤣🤣🤣

This instrument would be perfect for a video game soundboard

anyone else click just to find out what dafuq a "sympathetic nail" is?

Oooh toi tu devrai faire une collab avec Monsieur Weirdo (aka NakedTattoo Guy)

Would the distance apart of each set of nails affect the sympathetic vibration? Or, in other words, would setting nails closer or further apart affect how they vibrate together?

You need a disc out of wood and leather strip Glue in on the let the disc spin on a guitar

Your video was so refreshing. I'm absolutely in awe ♥

i take it you've read bart hopkin's book on musical instruments lol

I play the violin (lor at least try to). While watching this, I was thinking of making one that plays like a violin. Basically one long neck with blocks of wood along it, with nails arranged in a curves. Then use a piezo pickup to capture the sound.

Perfect for sci-Fi,fantasy,and children movies

Nice build! An idea: you could try buckled springs to put on the nails and make them easily tunable. Like in a Fender Rhodes.

if you were to incorporate some of the automaton violin tech into this device like the spinning bow cylinder (infinite draw) and implement one of them per nail note you could in theory rig them on a travel system like a hinge with a travel stop and a string to pull the sleeved shaft of the rotating drum and have those strings attached to a keyboard type system to effectively adapt this to a very usable instrument.

Some notes are really asmr inducing, would wanna hear a long soundtrack with the gentle playing (:

They could definitely be used as some weird atmospheric foley in movies.

Why not put it on a wheel so you can jump between notes without massive arm movements?

The word subtile is said "suttle" not sub-tile F.Y.I.

Do you think brass nails would make a more bright sound?

6:26 you're welcome

A really interesting video, seeing how you took a simple concept and made a really complex instrument at the end - it really sounded great. I loved the part towards the end when you played it with two hands without the bow.

What a great little instrument for animations. The sounds are so familiar but so foreign.

I want to see this tried but with high end parts and specially made nails ( with a alloy made for its musical quality)

Ive just found you and have watched several of your videos. Ive come to the unavoidable conclusion that you are mad. Utterly, beautifully, fantastically, incredibly, gorgeously mad! So glad that I bumped into you whilst navigating a RU-vid rabbit hole! :o) xx

I wonder if the combination of a nail violin and a sanza/mbira/kalimba type would be productive - either one could provide sympathetic sounding for the other, and you would have an easy combination of plucked and bowed sounds.

I'm surprised you didn't accidentally lightly tap a bunch of surrounding nails and change their note, when trying to add the next nail! Had to be really difficult with all those nails driven to a very specific depth and being so close together (and how many there are)...

Интересненько привосходная гвоздескрипка

Your videos always make me smile. Wonderful, thank you!

Umm, nails are similar to the tines in a music box, so, just get a music box

Mind-blowing stuff, where did U get those ideas? Now You have subscriber from Odessa, Ukraine!

The portuguese title of this video is incorrect, we have different names for nails you hammer and nails you have on your fingers. It would be more correct being "Um violino com pregos?"

hey, did you heard of Martin from Wintergatan?

I love the tunes. Please wear safety glasses friend.

The Gerard Butler of music :-O

El afilador

fascinating ! I wonder if you just used steel rod instead of a nail? Also, the head of the nail would effect the sound, remove one and I'm sure the note would get higher pitch with less resonance. Solder more weight to the end and you could get more sustain. I have made a few slit drums and the more weight on the end the longer the notes hold. Also a very hard wood for the top, like wenge...just a few ideas. thanks for posting!

Nicolas, you should try and build a Yaybahar. It doesn't need to be a big one, at first. Try a smaller version or create your own version.

I wonder if looking to ther dynamics of an ukelyn would help. The sound from your nails reminds me of this instrument. (I'm not sure I spelled the instrument correctly).

what if you did this in the top of an acoustic guitar???

Double bass rosin would make the bow grip more especially on the larger nails. It is stickier than violin rosin. 👍

I wonder if you could make an instrument based on this principle that has a number of bows held in fixed position on the outside of circles of those nails that rotate with each nail tuned so that as the circle turns it plays a tune, by adding more cirlces you could have more layers to the tune. On a side note you may find you get more tuning stability by adding some epoxy at the base of the nail, or ideally where it pokes out the other side if at all possible.

Have you thought about making this a tunable instrument. Tedious but not hard to do.

a cada instrumento fico mais fascinado, eu vi as flautas adorei o projeto parabens

Cool. I wonder if you mount a speaker in it would the sympathetic nails resonant to music coming from the speaker?