At Cornell University, researchers have used a laser to pluck the strings on a microscopic guitar as a way to highlight the advantages of an optical technique that potentially will provide optically driven actuation and detection for future nanoelectromechanical devices in such applications as chemical and biological sensing and signal processing. The guitar device has freestanding strings of silicon between 150--200nm across and between 6--12 mu m long. The instrument was produced with high-voltage electron-beam lithography and wet chemical etching. Researchers pluck a string on the crystalline silicon guitar by illuminating it with 632.8nm light from a HeNe laser. The string oscillates at a resonant frequency based on its length. The guitar is 'heard' by combining light reflected from the vibrating string with that from the substrate below to produce interference patterns at a photodetector. An audible tone is emitted with the response from a spectrum analyzer connected to the receiver is electrically down-converted. In chemical or biological sensing, the presence of a target molecule on a functionalized resonant nanomechanical device would generate specific changes in the signal at the detector. Nanostructures could replace the radio frequency oscillators in multiple types of electronic devices, including cell phones, which would benefit from very low power operation. Also possible would be an ability to tune the stable resonance of such devices through the application of a DC voltage.