Insight into the fascinating process that led to the creation of the Glissotar. The development of the Glissotar began in 2016 when Dániel Váczi and Tóbiás Terebessy teamed up to explore new possibilities in woodwind musical instruments. Dániel, a musician, composer and inventor, had long wondered about the form and function of the instruments that have evolved and crystallized as we see them today, and what would happen if we broke away from them and started again from scratch, in a completely different way. 

This led to the idea of an instrument that could glide between pitches effortlessly, combining the sound of a reed instrument with the expressive intonation typical of string instruments. The goal was to create a new kind of instrument that allowed for smooth transitions between notes, much like the human voice.

The first prototype was quite basic: a bamboo tube with a slot and a fridge magnet attached to it, combined with the mouthpiece of a saxophone. This experiment confirmed that the concept worked, and from there, the Glissotar was born. Over the following years, Dániel and Tóbiás worked closely with a team of expert craftsmen, including woodwind, brass, and string instrument makers, to refine the instrument’s design, materials, and components.

In its final form, the Glissotar stands out with its unique design: it features a longitudinal slot along the instrument’s tube, covered by a magnetic strip that allows for smooth pitch changes. Instead of traditional tone holes, the player can press the magnetic strip at any point to produce any pitch within a continuous range.

While the Glissotar is a new invention, the concept of continuous pitch sliding between notes on a woodwind instrument has a long history. Leonardo da Vinci sketched an early version of a recorder with a longitudinal slot in the 15th century, and in the last 120 years, various attempts were made to create sliding saxophones, such as the Royal Slide Saxophone and the King C Saxoprano in the 1920s. Bart Hopkin developed the Moe instrument family with a very similar solution in the 1990s. 

Today, the Glissotar is reaching more people, and more musicians are discovering its unique sound and potential. If you’d like to dive deeper into the detailed history of the Glissotar, its development, and the challenges along the way, we invite you to explore our blog series, where we cover the full story in greater depth.