Aeolian harps are a series of harp strings that the wind vibrates. While this sounds like it would be beautiful, the sound they make is ghastly cacophony of all the notes playing at once sounding like an air raid siren or the soundtrack to a movie when the murderer stalks his victim.
With this, as well as vibrating the strings, the wind would rotate the unit so different chords were played. It would do so because the strings are around a central resonating tube that blocks the flow. When the strings are upwind in front of the tube, they vibrate, as they turn behind the tube, the wind is blocked.
I'd also have the wind catching vanes move dynamically so if it got blown too hard, they'd pull in and slow the device down similar to the speed governor on a steam engine.
This may have been done but my exhaustive 20 second search didn't come up with anything.-- doctorremulac3, Feb 12 2023 Yea, no. https://www.youtube...watch?v=qUv8LYpL4-U [doctorremulac3, Feb 12 2023] https://en.wikipedi...g/wiki/Aeolian_harp [pocmloc, Feb 12 2023] Aeolian piano [pocmloc, Feb 14 2023] Okay, here's a pretty one, even tuned to a chord. https://www.youtube...watch?v=LO7yiuOEvFIStill, sounds like there's a murderer sneaking up in a dark hallway. [doctorremulac3, Feb 14 2023] Picture two of these glued back to back and rotating. https://en.wikipedi...e:Japanese_Koto.jpg [doctorremulac3, Feb 14 2023] Originally Aeolian harps were designed so that all the strings were tuned to the same note. The wind then sounds only one note, plus its natural harmonics (which by definition are all in tune).
The idea of taking a normal harp and letting the wind play it is a later degenerate idea that is only proposed by morons who have no understanding of aesthetics, acoustics, physics or heritage.
(see link)
Thinking further, I am not sure how rotating the device would change the string being excited. I think a set of mechanically actuated dampers, which rest on a series of differently-tuned strings, and which are raised sequentially (perhaps by a barrel-organ type mechanism) could have promising results.-- pocmloc, Feb 12 2023 I like that. How about basically a slowly rotating fan that allows air to hit various sections?
Anything to get rid of that god aweful "THE ZOMBIES ARE HERE!" sound.-- doctorremulac3, Feb 12 2023 OK thinking about this again. Criticising the linked Youtube for sounding bad is like criticising someone's first homemade guitar they made from a washing up bowl with clothes-line and binder twine strings.
i.e. its not a good start to be trying to invent improvements. That work has been done already: see professional traditional aeolian harps.
But I was also interested in your idea of selective sounding of different pitches, so I am busy inventing. Link on its way.-- pocmloc, Feb 14 2023 Looking forward to it.
I looked at other aeolian harps, and although the one linked has a very hillbilly vibe, it sounds like the others. I'll put a pretty one up to compare.
Have you ever had something explode close to your head and got that ringing sound in your ears? That's what aeolian harps sound like to me.-- doctorremulac3, Feb 14 2023 Clarified this with the link, you could make this exactly by just gluing two kotos together and having them rotate in the wind.
So basically you could go to a music store and a hardware store and have one of these built in a couple of hours.-- doctorremulac3, Feb 14 2023 random, halfbakery