When is a guitar not a guitar? When it's the Coltar. The Coltar, a project by Philipp Lenssen from Germany, combines strips of colored cardboard, a Lego Mindstorms kit, and a color sensor to make tunes that seem like something out of an old video game.
The Coltar has a series of cardboard strips that feature six different colors, and each color corresponds to a different musical note. When you run the color sensor over a particular color, the Coltar will play the note that corresponds to that color. The longer you hold the sensor over a color, the longer it'll play note. A button at the top of the Mindstorms controller lets you alter the chord.
Philipp made the Coltar for a bit of fun, and he demonstrated his quirky guitar-like creation by performing an almost 8-bit version of Guns N' Roses’ "Sweet Child of Mine".
Visit Philipp’s blog to see a host of other interesting projects, and other mods he created with color as a theme.
This story, "Lego-powered Coltar swaps strings for color to make sweet music" was originally published by TechHive.