Twenty-seven years ago, in search of a hurdy-gurdy master, Donald Heller wandered into a music shop in Budapest. There, he saw a beautiful maiden, an ancient-looking stringed instrument in her lap, ...

Movies benefit from Oscar exposure--and so do weird instruments. In the week after Sting played a hurdy-gurdy (a wooden stringed instrument with a keyboard and a crank that turns a wheel that acts as ...

Today's Beautiful Music is an introduction to the hurdy-gurdy. The unusual string instrument is played with a hand crank, and its ancestor -- the organistrum -- dates back at least to the 12th century ...

Stringed instruments bowed by a wheel cranked by hand have been around for centuries, and come in many shapes and sizes. Inspired by 16th century instruments, mechanical model maker UGears has created ...

The Hurdy-Gurdy continues to worm its way into pole position as the hacker’s instrument. How else could you explain a medieval wheel fiddle being turned into a synthesizer? Move over, keytar — [Rory ...

The hurdy-gurdy is one of Europe's oldest musical instruments. A kind of mechanical violin, it uses keys and a crank, along with melody and drone strings. Some call it the medieval synthesizer, and a ...

Ask Idahoans today what a hurdy-gurdy is, and most will have no idea. A few will probably know that a hurdy-gurdy was a kind of hand-cranked musical instrument popular in the 19th century. But if you ...

If you’re looking for a long journey into the wonderful world of instrument hacking, [Arty Farty Guitars] is six parts into a seven part series on hacking an existing guitar into a ...