Building a Hurdy-Gurdy — The Crank-Powered Wheel Fiddle

The hurdy-gurdy is bowed not by hand but by a rosined wheel you turn with a crank. A little keyboard fingers the melody, drones hum underneath, and a buzzing bridge beats the rhythm — a whole band worked by one cranking hand.

Build a hollow wooden body with a light soundboard on top — lute-shaped or a simple box. It carries and amplifies all the strings.

Cut a smooth, perfectly round wooden wheel that pokes up through a slot in the soundboard. It must run TRUE, without any wobble, or the sound will judder.

Mount the wheel on an axle through the body with a bent crank handle at one end, so it spins freely and smoothly when you turn the crank.

Coat the edge of the wheel with pine rosin. The rosined rim is a bow that never stops — it grips and releases the strings over and over as it turns.

Stretch the strings along the top so they rest lightly on the rim of the wheel, tuned with pegs at the far end. Wind a little cotton on each string where it meets the wheel for a clean tone.

Set aside one or two strings as the MELODY strings and the rest as DRONES, which will sound one steady note the whole time the wheel turns.

Build a box over the melody strings holding a row of sliding wooden KEYS, each carrying a small peg — a tangent.

Position each key's tangent so that pressing the key pushes it against the melody string and shortens it to the next note of the scale — a keyboard of frets you press from the side.

Turn the crank steadily. The wheel bows every string it touches at once, so the melody strings and all the drones sing together.

Crank with one hand and press the keys with the other. The keys pick out the melody while the drones hum steadily beneath it, just like a bagpipe.

Rest one drone string on a loose, lopsided little bridge — the 'dog' (chien). A sharp jerk of the crank makes it snap up and buzz against the soundboard: a built-in drum.

Give the crank little accented pushes so the buzzing bridge rattles in time. Now you have melody, drone AND rhythm, all from one turning wheel.

The hurdy-gurdy is a bowed string instrument whose bow is a wheel. A wooden disc, its rim coated in rosin, is turned by a crank so it rubs continuously against the strings, grabbing and releasing them by the same stick-slip friction as a violin bow or the erhu — but this bow never lifts, so every string it touches sings on and on for as long as you crank. That is why the hurdy-gurdy makes drones so naturally: the strings you are not fingering simply hum a steady note, a built-in bagpipe. The melody is played by a keyboard: pressing a key pushes a little wooden tangent against a melody string to shorten its speaking length to the next note, exactly the way a fret does, so a row of keys becomes a fingerboard you play without ever touching the string. And the rhythm comes from a clever trick — one string rides on a loose, lopsided bridge called the 'dog'; a sudden push on the crank makes that bridge snap and buzz against the soundboard, a sharp percussive 'coup' the player fires in time with the tune. So one cranking hand drives melody, harmony and rhythm at once, which is why the hurdy-gurdy was the one-person dance band of European villages for a thousand years. It began in the Middle Ages as the large two-person organistrum played in churches, then shrank into the portable vielle à roue. Its wheel bows the same strings a lyre plucks, a santur hammers and a morin khuur bows by hand, and its constant-drone cousin is the bagpipe.