This guitarist was messing around with his nylon string guitar and decided to drop his iPhone inside it to record the strings from the other side. As he played, he noticed that the strings seemed to vibrate in patterns that approximately resembled the waveforms for various notes and sounds – whole notes seemed to square off while harmonics rolled in a soft, hilly pattern. While, as many will point out, this is not a true representation of a string’s motion, it is nonetheless quite nice to look at.
The effect is caused by the iPhone’s rolling shutter image acquisition system and, in reality, the entire string is vibrating back and forth. However, with a little ingenuity, the guitarist has created a haunting way to represent a short snippet of Tears in Heaven along with a few other excellent musical renditions.
If you’re curious, here’s how guitar strings really vibrate.