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Comment by isoprophlex | Hacker News Reader

It's shockingly easy to make it sound good! Someone who understands music please explain to me why this works so well, I'm amazed!

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The four groups of strings make up four chords. Going clockwise, they are C, Am, F, G. This is a common chord progression[1] in pop music. It became popular because the chords sound good together.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2750s_progression

A video to drive this home, with examples from pop songs: https://youtu.be/oOlDewpCfZQ

I should note that this is the same 4 chords as the '50s progression, but a different ordering (I V vi IV vs I vi IV V). One is associated with more recent pop/punk music and the others is more associated with doo-wop.

As others said - they're chords. And not just any chords, but chords we know sound great together. (If you haven't seen the 'Pachelbel Rant' yet, you should, it's an entire comedy bit based on the fact that these chords are fundamental to music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxC1fPE1QEE)

If you click on the little notes in the bottom right, you can pick other sets of chords, which give a different "vibe". (Me, I'm partial to the Andalusian ones)

That's why common advice to people starting the guitar is "Three chords, you can play anything. Four, you control the mood. Five, you're a god among men"

Pachelbel is slightly more complicated than the default here, five chords instead of four (adding iii - F#m in the key of D that he used, or Em in the key of C which is the key that this defaults to). So I guess that makes Pachelbel a god among men.

Actually....Pachelbel used a major III

They are all chords (C, F, G, Am).

C/Am, F, G are adjacent in the circle of fifths so they will all play nice in a progression.

To flesh this out, the root notes of C and A minor are not that close in the circle of fifths, but the chords sound similar because they share 2 notes (C is spelled C, E, G, and A minor is spelled A, C, E). A common device in major keys is to take a part played over the "1" chord (C in this case) and play it again, or some close variation, over the chord 2 steps down (A minor in this case) to get a "kind of the same, but sadder" version of the same part.

There is an acoustic version, you can tune it however you like, and choose from all kinds of chords, but once you chose a chord it has to be tuned precisely to that set of notes or it would be "out of tune".

Each course of strings on the webpage somewhat behaves and sounds like an "ovikannel" when you strum it manually.

Here's one that was found hanging on a wall but they were normally attached to an entrance door so the wooden balls would swing against the strings when the door was opened, and play the chime:

https://www.reddit.com/r/finnish/comments/dvd125/my_finnish_...

One of the commenters was quite curious as to what it would sound like. Well about like this.

The notes assigned to strings are chosen to make up chords (harmony).

Even when making my own string it still sounds good. I didn't known I'm that gifted!

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