An instrument R&D, robotics, and sound-technology lab. We take a traditional sitar and augment it with a dynamic harmonic system — expanding what the instrument can do, while keeping the performer at its center.
The vision for the Harmonic Sitar came from Yoav Fekete before NaadLabs existed. NaadLabs was created as the organizational, technical, and R&D vehicle to manifest it — to give a centuries-old instrument a robotic, dynamic harmonic system without ever displacing the musician.
We build the mechanism. The performer stays at the center. This is the founding project that defines the lab — not one example among many.
NaadLabs joins instrument craft to robotics and computation. Every capability points back to one goal: a robotically augmented sitar that a musician plays, not a machine that plays itself.
Novel mechanisms, geometry, materials, and playability — built and refined on the bench until the instrument feels right in the hands.
Real-time control, firmware, actuation, and mechanical glide — the moving system that produces harmonic motion on demand.
Analysis, tuning, and responsive harmonic behavior that listens to the player and answers in time.
Actuated systems engineered to extend the range of an instrument — never to replace the artist behind it.
Controls and sensing designed so the musician stays in command of every note and gesture.
The Harmonic Sitar is our center of gravity. In time, the same foundations may extend to other instruments and performance tools:
These are research directions, not products.
The Harmonic Sitar comes first.
NaadLabs holds the technical and R&D context. The musical origin and the broader intellectual map live alongside it.
The sound, the playing, and the artistic context of the Harmonic Sitar — where the instrument is performed.
yoyositar.com/harmonic-sitar → Entity & intellectual mapHow the Harmonic Sitar sits within Yoav Fekete's broader body of work and systems thinking.
yoavfekete.com/systems/harmonic-sitar →We're open to performers, engineers, instrument makers, and partners who want to push what an augmented instrument can do — with the musician always at the center.
yoavfekete@gmail.com
