Electric Hurdy Gurdy: a Custom Instrument for an Immersive World

For Hoist The Colors (Original Soundtrack) I created a custom virtual instrument to achieve a unique sound that you can't hear anywhere else

Midjourney’s interpretation of what a magical electric hardy curdy might look like

When I was commissioned to compose the soundtrack to Hoist The Colors (you can find links to listen on your favorite platform by clicking here) one of the first places my mind went was sound design and instrument creation. Any orchestral composer can put together a set of themes, but creating a soundscape that stands out is what actually grounds the music in a setting or a time period. For Hoist the Colors I knew we were going to be spending a lot of time at sea in an alternate 1700s reality where magic exists.

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I wanted to create an instrument that was representative of the time period, evoked the ocean, and yet was somehow modern and magical. I settled pretty quickly on the hurdy-gurdy as a starting point. This is a really fun instrument that was very popular in the 18th century and has undeniable pirate/nautical associations. The sound comes from turning a hand-crank to vibrate a wheel against the strings - vaguely like a music box in concept. I wanted to modify my custom hurd-gurdy to make it capable of playing an “impossible” sound, so I put an amp simulator and a bunch of processing on it and played it staccato in a way that would be fairly difficult if not impossible for an actual hurdy-gurdy player (I’m not a hurdy-gurdy expert so I would need a fact-check on this, but it’s the kind of playing that you would normally use a bowed instrument like a fiddle for instead). And thus the “Electric Hurdy-Gurdy” was born. You can hear it most prominently in the following tracks from the album:

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What you see in the image above is not a real instrument - it’s just a fun visual representation of what I imagine my “electric hurdy-gurdy” might look like. In reality, the “instrument” looks like this:

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These are just a few of the tools I used to create it. The result is a virtual instrument that can’t possibly exist in real life. It exists only in the world of Hoist the Colors, which you can discover more about by clicking here.

You can listen to the album below on Spotify or whichever platform you prefer. If you like it please give it a save and follow me so you don’t miss the next one.

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