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Olaf Diegel with some of his 3D printed creations. (Images supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller).
Olaf Diegel with some of his 3D printed creations. (Images supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller).

New Zealand MusicMay 11, 2022

‘The future of musical instruments’ could be inside this 3D printing professor’s lab

Olaf Diegel with some of his 3D printed creations. (Images supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller).
Olaf Diegel with some of his 3D printed creations. (Images supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller).

Olaf Diegel makes guitars like you’ve never seen before. Naomii Seah visits his University of Auckland lab to find out how 3D printing could open up whole new worlds of musical possibilities.

The Newmarket campus of Waipapa Taumata Rau – University of Auckland is a formidable building. The former Lion Breweries site looms large just off the busy Khyber Pass Road, its façade all glossy white and silver chrome. It would look more like a Mars base than a place of education if it wasn’t for all the university’s signage. 

But perhaps the building’s futuristic appearance is fitting considering the kind of research activity inside. Inside, past a row of gleaming race cars belonging to the university’s Formula SAE team, there’s a space filled with a whole host of bizarre objects. Through the window, I spy a water feature that looks like a futuristic shower for mice, a life-size human anatomical model, a towering torso shaped from a lattice structure and many other abstract shapes in fantastical colours. 

This is Olaf Diegel’s lab. Its official title is the Creative Design and Additive Manufacturing Lab, and it’s a part of the university’s engineering department. Diegel and his team specialise in 3D printing – most of the items on display have been printed using their in-house printers, which can create designs in a variety of materials including plastic polymers, metals and even food powders. 

Although the lab’s experiments sound like the eccentric creations of some mad scientist type, you wouldn’t guess it by looking at Diegel. Dressed in a blue button-down and jeans, the affable Dunedin-born engineer just seems like your classic lawn-mowing, barbecue-loving dad. He speaks quickly in an accent that’s hard to place, but which I’ll later find out is a mix of New Zealand, Canadian and South African. Evidently passionate about his work, he launches straight into a tour of the lab, showing me all the machines and what the team has created over the years.

On a table by the door, several tiny models of people printed in colour are so precisely detailed that even their skin looks realistic, criss-crossed with red veins and hair-like strokes. On the wall, there are several life-size models of Diegel’s own face – they can trick Samsung and Huawei’s facial-recognition software, he tells me in a conspiratorial tone, but not iPhones. One of the replica faces has eyeballs in it that can move side to side. One of the lab’s other projects involves food printing, where powdered food can be used to create easily-chewable customised meals with specific nutritional values. They’ve also been involved in making models of the city for Auckland Council, anatomical models, and replicas of delicate artefacts. 

Diegel with a 3D printed replica of his face (Image: Supplied)

But the thing we’re really here to see is sitting in the corner, unassuming among the many other fantastical objects. It’s a fuschia-pink, alien-looking 3D printed electric guitar. Well, not this guitar specifically – Diegel has been making 3D printed guitars, drums and other instruments for over 10 years now. He made his first guitar in 2011 and wrote a blog about it. Musicians around the world began contacting him, blown away by the intricate design, and the rest is history. He’s been selling 3D printed instruments under the moniker ODD Guitars ever since, producing more than 80 so far.

“If you’re going to make a plain looking, normal looking instrument, printing is a dumb way to make it,” Diegel tells me over the whirring of the machines around us. “But when you’ve got these incredibly complex shapes, that’s when 3D printing shines.” 

And it’s evident that these guitars would be practically impossible to make without that 3D printing technology. Diegel boasts many designs for his guitars, but they’re all made from one piece of hollow plastic; inside, his designs boast what he refers to as “eye candy”.

“They’re almost like a diorama… the trick is always to make the body so you can see inside.” 

This allows Diegel to create designs such as Americana, “a New York and American themed” guitar with a stars-and-stripes design. Inside the body, Diegel has fashioned landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Street Bridge and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He says themed guitars like this are the most fun to design. 

His favourite is his Beatlemania bass: “It’s Paul McCartney’s violin-shaped [Hofner] bass, and inside of it there’s the yellow submarine, the Abbey Road – all iconic scenes from the Beatles era.” He kept the original Beatles bass for himself, but has since sold another one to a customer in the States – those are the only two in existence. 

A close-up of Diegel’s ‘Beatlemania’ design. (Image supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller).

Diegel has been 3D printing since the 90s, when he worked in product development for lighting companies. Back then, 3D printing was almost exclusively used for prototyping. But in the past decade or so, that technology has finally gotten good enough to become a viable manufacturing tool.

Not that the process is easy by any means. Diegel shows me two triceratops figurines rendered in metal. One is smoothly polished and finely detailed, and the other is almost completely covered by thin metal supports. These struts are important for structural integrity as the figures are assembled, says Diegel, and so many of the 3D printed models undergo lengthy and laborious post-processing. 

“One of the guitars [I’ve made] is printed in aluminium. My hands were bleeding by the end of that one from removing all the supports inside! It took me four days to remove all these points. You have to break it off with dentist’s tools.” 

The plastic-powder based instruments are comparatively easy to produce, though they do take a lot of work to paint and decorate. But Diegel can’t make them in his lab on campus – he has to outsource the job as the instrument bodies are too big for the university’s machines. Another issue is the cost: the machines use a lot of energy and materials, with designs taking hours to print. We’re talking in the ballpark of $150 per hour to run, says Diegel, and depending on the design and the speed of the machine products can take close to a day to complete, meaning costs stack up fast.

A close-up of Diegel’s ‘American Graffiti’ guitar. (Image supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller).

In addition to his many guitars made from plastic, metal, and his most recent design of compacted sawdust, Diegel has also 3D printed saxophones, drums and keyboards. He says he’s pretty content making string and percussion instruments, but in his opinion the most interesting design possibilities are actually in wind instruments.

“You can have all these weird cavities inside the instrument that modulate the air going through in certain ways. You could produce completely unique sounds that would be impossible to make any other way.”

Diegel brings out a replica of a taonga pūoro, namely a large pūtātara, or shell trumpet. It’s been printed in plastic, and he blows into it, producing a resonant call. “There’s no way to manufacture this,” says Diegel, referring to the complex spirals and hollows inside the shell. “Nature has done it in a million years, but with 3D printing, suddenly, you can [replicate] that. Now you could even go a step further and start to change the way the air circulates through the shell.”

“I think that’s where the future of musical instruments is: making unique new instruments, new sounds. I think that’s where the fun is going to be.” 

In the meantime, Diegel’s next project will be redesigning the 3D printed saxophone. His first attempt leaked air, and he believes his mistake was trying to emulate traditional saxophones too closely. “I’ve already been thinking of maybe using magnets as a spring,” he tells me, eyes gleaming with the possibilities.

Diegel with a set of 3D printed instruments. (Image: Supplied)

But one big question still remains: how do these 3D printed instruments actually sound? The short answer: “they sound good,” says Diegel. Sure, he might be biased, but he does note that his instruments are basically “a wooden guitar with a small body that has a clip-on 3D printed shell”. The pick-ups do all the work, says Diegel, so the interesting body designs are purely aesthetic. 

For the truly curious, Diegel is putting on a musical showcase at Devonport’s Depot Artspace to coincide with both New Zealand Music Month and Techweek. The exhibition will run for the whole of May, and at the opening (this Friday May 13 from 5-7pm) a band will play on an entirely 3D printed set of musical instruments, including a 3D printed guitar, keyboard, bass, drums and microphone. Instruments on display will include Diegel’s hand-destroying aluminium guitar and his prized Beatles bass. 

“It’ll be the first time there’s a live 3D-printed band playing in New Zealand,” says Diegel. He doesn’t know what they’re going to play yet, but says he’s looking forward to the surprise.

Keep going!
Georgia Lines (Photo: Supplied; Additional design: The Spinoff)
Georgia Lines (Photo: Supplied; Additional design: The Spinoff)

New Zealand MusicJuly 26, 2021

Georgia Lines on finding her voice, trusting herself and not burning out early

Georgia Lines (Photo: Supplied; Additional design: The Spinoff)
Georgia Lines (Photo: Supplied; Additional design: The Spinoff)

As the young songwriter steps confidently into a new phase of her career, she explains how it’s unfolded to this point.

Georgia Lines comes bearing gifts. Ice blocks, to be specific. Never mind that we’re past the crest of the afternoon on what might be the coldest day in an unusually cold Auckland winter, the Tauranga-based-and-raised singer-songwriter is in good spirits, and she’s feeling generous.

She’s in town only briefly, visiting to perform the following evening with a handful of the most esteemed wāhine in contemporary Aotearoa music. We meet at Auckland city-fringe neighbourhood hangout Frieda’s, Lines seated at a piano in the darkened front bar as I arrive. 

She greets me warmly, cold treats in hand, and remains gracious as I shamefacedly refuse her thoughtful offer. She’s fresh from rehearsal, one night removed from probably the most prestigious gig of her still young career, and what strikes me first in her ease and her enthusiasm is how entirely uncowed she seems by any aspect of the occasion. 

“I usually get real nervous [before performing], like regardless of the show I’ll get nervous,” she admits, “But I feel really excited for this.” It’s a difference which she attributes in part to having somewhat less responsibility than she’s used to – ”It’s not all resting on me…telling my band what to do” – but also to the mana of the event’s more established names – Annie Crummer, Anika Moa, Julia Deans and Tami Neilson among them.

“I feel so privileged to be a part of it. I’m just 24-year-old Georgia, and to be a part of this amazing room full of wāhine that carry something so special…it’s amazing.”

For those taking only a cursory interest in the recent machinations of Aotearoa music, the presence of Lines – alongside fellow up-and-comer Paige – in such a pantheonic lineup may seem surprising. Zoom out, though, and the nod feels like justified acknowledgement of an imposing emerging talent. A Rockquest alumnus, she’s been writing since her teens, but first released music under her own name just a couple of years ago. 

Last year saw the arrival of her self-titled debut EP, a largely self-directed effort comprising close to six years of writing and honing and funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign. Crowdfunding enabled Lines to travel to Texas to record, and having gone through the process she felt obligated not to disappoint those who’d put their faith in her art. But something didn’t feel right. It was that uncomfortable feeling which led to one of the most difficult decisions she’s ever made: to start again.

“I went over to the States, and I had all these songs and this idea of what I thought I was going to do. And then when I got into the studio and started tracking I was like, ‘This doesn’t represent me as a person now.’”

Feeling ill at ease, Lines weighed up the potential risks of throwing out those first efforts and starting fresh – not least the very real possibility that the decision would be a fruitless one. After a conversation with her Auckland-based manager, her mind was set. “I went back the next morning and was like, ‘Cool, we’re starting again.’”

“I realised I just have to trust myself. And trust that I’m good at what I do. If I’m enjoying it and if I’m really proud of it, then that’s all I can do. I think getting to that point was a real pivotal moment.”

As with nearly everyone else in the music industry, Lines was materially impacted by the events of last year. When that debut EP was released on March 27th, just two days after the country moved into level four lockdown, in-person promotion became an impossibility. Live performances were deferred; broader plans derailed almost entirely. 

But Lines kept moving forward. In October 2020, barely half a year after the release of her debut, she returned to the studio, this time with in-demand producer and collaborator Djeisan Suskov (Leisure, Benee). The first fruit of their joint labour, the pared back but propulsive ‘No One Knows’, arrived in March and signaled clearly a new era not only for Lines’ songwriting, but for its presentation. 

Built on top of a simple four-bar piano loop, the song builds and recedes for a scant three minutes. Throbbing synths and crackling percussion arrive and depart; wordless backing singers cross-talk behind submarine filters. At the centre of all that is Lines’ powerful lead line, mixed high and dry to the point that it almost sounds more like a series of impeccably layered voice notes than a pop vocal. On headphones, it feels almost unsettlingly intimate. As Lines tells it, that was exactly the intent.

“I love the idea of it being so close that it feels like I’m talking to you,” she acknowledges. “It feels very honest.”

The song’s follow-up, ‘Call Me By My Name’, arrived this past Friday. A kind of cold weather bossa nova, it offers an ode to romantic vulnerability; to the scarier than it should be idea of standing in front of someone you love and asking them to accept all aspects of you. It’s for sure less pacey than the song it follows, but the simple clarity of its writing ensures its impacts are no less immediate. For Lines, that’s testament to the trust she feels in working with Suskov.

“It’s a massive credit to Djeis for creating an environment where I feel OK to have the conversations that have resulted in these songs. I haven’t had that with someone before, and I think that’s been what’s really special about them – they start as these well-thought-through, pulled-apart conversations, and they end up with these beautifully written songs that carry so much weight for me.”

As her career continues to progress, and as she continues to accumulate accolades, it would be understandable for Lines’ ambitions or priorities to have shifted in the past couple of years. But while she acknowledges that her chosen career can be a psychically taxing one – ”I’ve heard so many stories of artists getting burnt out … there’s got to be another way of doing this” – she seems both genuinely content with how things have gone so far, and open to whatever comes next.

“I want to get to the end of my career, whatever that looks like, and be like, ‘I enjoyed that.’ I got to be a mum and I got to have a family and play shows and travel, and I actually enjoyed it. It didn’t rob me of who I am as an individual. I didn’t stop enjoying the process.”

This content, like Georgia Lines’ upcoming second record, was created with the support of NZ on Air.

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