Stringless Contrabass Trainer with Push-Button Fingerboard
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Solution Overview
Problem
The large size and fragility of the contrabass instrument make it difficult to transport and maintain in tune, especially for students, due to its high cost and sensitivity to environmental changes, limiting practice opportunities for musicians.
Innovation Solution
A portable, stringless contrabass trainer with a push-button fingerboard and actuators that mimic string plucking and bowing, using electronic components to produce realistic sound feedback through a speaker or jack, allowing for realistic fingering practice without the need for tuning or a resonating body.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a full-size contrabass instrument is used for practice, then realistic fingering and bowing techniques can be practiced, but the instrument is large, fragile, expensive, and requires frequent tuning
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a simplified copy of the contrabass fingerboard that replicates the essential playing surface and button layout, eliminating the need for strings, scroll, peg box, bridge, tailpiece, and resonating body. This copy maintains the functional layout for realistic fingering practice while removing fragile and expensive components that require tuning and maintenance.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention extracts only the essential playing surface (fingerboard with buttons) from the complete contrabass instrument, removing unnecessary components such as the resonating body, strings, and tuning mechanisms. This extraction reduces the device to its core functional elements needed for practice while eliminating sources of fragility and tuning requirements.
2Ease of operation
If a simplified practice device is used, then portability and cost are improved, but realistic sound feedback and fingering practice are compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the mechanical string vibration system with electronic actuators that simulate plucking and bowing actions. These actuators are controlled by button presses and produce electronic sound output, substituting the complex mechanical string-resonator system with an electronic equivalent that maintains portability while providing realistic sound feedback.
Solution Approach 2:
The device integrates multiple functions into a single portable unit: the fingerboard provides tactile feedback for fingering practice, the actuators simulate both plucking and bowing techniques, and the electronic system provides sound output through built-in speakers or external audio equipment. This multi-functionality maintains practice realism while ensuring portability.
Data Source
AI summary
A stringless portable electronic training device for a stringed instrument, such as a contrabass, has the shape of a fingerboard with just enough neck to provide realistic left hand position, and just enough body to contain actuators corresponding with strings, electronics, a speaker, and an output jack. On the fingerboard are rows of push buttons corresponding with the location of the notes. The push buttons are held down to select notes which are sounded by actuators at a lower end of the fingerboard. Actuating without the pressing of a button produces the note of the open string. The actuators may include a set of flippers that replicate the plucking of strings and a set of elongated buttons that sustain a bowed sound as they are pressed down. The sound is produced electronically through a built-in speaker and/or output jack.