Musical organs operate on the principle that reverberating the air within a pipe of given length will produce a note an octave above a tube that is twice its length, and it is this effect which the Nellophone utilizes to sound its thirty different notes, from A an octave below middle C to D an octave above middle C. With the musician standing at the instrument's axis, a slap of the special paddles across the padded mouth of each tube produces a hauntingly electronic sound. The tubes range in length from 6 to 30 feet, and the entire device spans 12 feet wide by 15 feet high.