The Clavichord needs no introduction to fans of Early Music, and a lengthy one to literally everyone else. Even classical music buffs who have heard of Bach’s works for the “Well-Tempered Clavier” — another word for clavichord — will mostly have heard them performed on Piano. That is perhaps fitting, as the clavichord is a distant ancestor of the modern piano. It has keys — though fewer of them than a piano — whose action strikes strings — though much, much fewer of those than a piano, as each string is required to generate multiple notes. [Ian Summers] has an excellent guide on how he built his, though be warned that that link goes to a PDF and the SSL certificate was having problems as of this writing. If you aren’t comfortable grabbing a PDF over old-style HTTP, we’ve embedded the demo/build video below so you can give a listen to what this pre-piano instrument sounds like.

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