A New Level of Satisfaction

So, after all this talk about building instruments, how do they sound?  The bowed clock chime and the kalimba, at least, sound like this: 

As I mentioned in my previous post about the bowed clock chime, I had made some recordings with the instrument back in November, but I didn't do anything more with them.  Last month, I was going through some of my old "song stems" and was reminded of what I had done with the bowed chime; listening to it again, I heard the tinkle of a kalimba in my head and knew what to do.  Today, when I finished tuning the kalimba, I immediately pulled up the bowed chime tracks and began to mess about with the instruments together.  

I really love how the piece came out.  The sound of the bowed clock chime is very satisfying, so full of harmonics and breathy timbres.  The kalimba's plink provides a perfect counter to the chime's soft, slow, bowed attacks and yet both instruments' textures overlap, as they would since they are both metal lamellaphones.  The nature of the bowed chime pulls for a meditative ground, while the kalimba's ability to fill in some of the notes that are missing in the chime make the latter's drone more musical.  

More than that, it's immensely satisfying to create a sound from scratch and make music with it.  Nine years ago when I reconnected with music and started composing, I was especially interested in timbre, texture, and sound design.  Computer music made that really accessible, but over time I've been increasingly dissatisfied with most electronic voices and drawn toward those that at least begin with acoustic, "real-world" sounds.  Today, I can imagine a sound-making machine and what kind of sound it might make, then build it and make music with those sounds.  This feels like something I was meant to do.  

You Say, "Mbira," I Say, "Kalimba..."

I've loved the sound of mbiras since I first heard them.  I mentioned this fact once to a friend who had a small one in his office and he later surprised me with one as a gift; I keep it on my table of favorite instruments in my studio.  Building one from a kit seemed like an obvious choice for getting my feet wet in instrument making, so when one came on sale last month, I didn't blink.  Here's the finished piece:

Front/top.


Back.


Right side.

I learned in researching for this post that "mbira" is a broader class of instruments of which "kalimba" is a particular type; this kit is, as far as I can tell, properly a kalimba.  I'm happy with the way it turned out.  Most important, of course, is the sound, which is lovely; the folks who designed it seem to know what they're doing.  The shellac finish came out well enough.  It's not terribly robust, which I knew, but I like what it did to the wood (hard to see in detail in these pix) and I'm looking forward to seeing how it ages; critically, it seems not to interfere with the sound, which was my primary criterion.  

(A brief search online reveals a wide and enthusiastic debate about what finishes are best for musical instruments with wooden resonators.  Polymerized varnishes like one finds on tables or basketball court floors are tough as nails but that property actually mutes vibrations.  Lacquer is common on pianos and electric guitars for its relative strength and ease of application with the right equipment, but that equipment is expensive and lacquer itself is nasty toxic.  Oils like tung or linseed are lovely but terribly slow to cure and I'm unsure of their acoustic effects -- and no one seems to use them on musical instruments.  The varnish used on violins is based on tree sap and has ingredients that can cost hundreds of dollars an ounce, and I'm no Antontio Stradivari anyway.  On the other hand, shellac is made of inexpensive, natural, non-toxic ingredients, can be layered to a lovely finish and dries rapidly; it is used by many luthiers for classical guitars, so it has demonstrated acceptable acoustic properties.  As I said, it's not terribly strong, but these are musical instruments, not pub bars or gym floors, so I think that's an acceptable downside.  And that's why I settled on shellac.)

There were, as is always the case with new projects, a few things that didn't go as I had hoped, the most noteworthy of these is the mark:  I had planned -- and, indeed, attempted -- to affix a paper label with my logo, the date, and instrument number (this is #2 after the bowed clock chime) inside the soundbox, viewable through the soundhole.  Unfortunately, my method for securing it failed and the label came off after the instrument was nearly complete.  Further experiments will be made.  

I learned quite a bit on this kit, identifying whole categories of things I didn't know that I didn't know.  On the whole, though, it was a very validating experience:  there was no question in my mind that I was (and remain) very ignorant on the subject of musical instrument design and building, but it turned out I knew more than I thought and was able to apply much of it to the discoveries of what I didn't know.  I'm very excited about this work and am looking forward to new, future experiments.  (A bowed psaltery is next in line!)

Bart Hopkin Is a God

Maybe ten or fifteen years ago, my father gave me a set of chimes that, I believe, came from a clock.  It was comprised of a piece of dark wood attached to a cast iron bridge/mount that, in turn, had a set of eight metal rod-gongs screwed into it.  If the assembly was attached to a resonator (such as the side of a grandfather clock) the rod-gongs, when struck, could chime with a bell-like tone; they were tuned to be able to play the Westminster chimes.  Dad said he had planned to make a doorbell with them, but had decided to scrap the idea and so passed them on to me, knowing my interest in bells.  

I hung onto the chimes through several moves, knowing I wanted to do something with them, but unsure what.  They sat loose in closets or stuffed into boxes, took up space on my desk, and, at one point just for fun, I bolted them to a bookcase and whacked them whenever I went by to hear the lovely chord they sounded.  Finally, last year sometime, I had the inspiration that they would probably sound cool if I bowed them, but they needed a resonator more portable than a bookcase.  

One night last November on my way home from the office, I went by a craft store and picked up one of those wooden project boxes that people paint or decoupage (I wonder what the other customers thought as I sorted through the shelf tapping on and listening to each box one by one).  At home on my family room floor, I spent quite a while experimenting with how to position the chime unit to get the best tone and resonance from the box.  I also expended some effort rehabilitating it, as the bridge was dusty and oily with age; in that process, one of the rod-gongs broke, but, fortunately, it was one of two at that pitch.  All that done, I finally screwed the reassembled unit to its new soundbox and began experimenting with playing it, using an old violin bow I had.  Unfortunately, the rods were nested in such a way that one could only access two at a time with the bow, so I couldn't play any melodies, however simple, but it made a really interesting drone with lots of overtones -- I was pleased.  Trying to mic it for recording tended to interfere with the bowing, so I experimented further with two piezo pads, eventually gluing them in place and attaching their 1/4" sockets to the walls of the soundbox.  I liked the amplified sound and recorded a piece with the instrument, but it seemed musically incomplete and I didn't know where to go with it, so I left it alone.  

Fast forward to this past week, when I found myself with a workshop in which I could actually build and experiment with musical instruments.  One of the explorations I was engaged in was figuring out what kind of finish I wanted to use for the instruments I was going to build.  I'd had quite a bit of experience working with lacquer, some with varnish, and a little with oils and they all had advantages and disadvantages; after much research (read: Internet surfing), I concluded that shellac was a good place to start, but I really hadn't done anything with it before.  I had already started building the kalimba kit, but wanted something to practice on before committing to that, so, after doing some tests on scrap wood, I decided the clock chime needed a finish.  In the end, I was pleased with how it came out, especially the dark wood to which the bridge is mounted, although it's difficult to see in these images the depth it added.  I now consider the instrument -- at least this iteration of it -- complete.  Thus:  

Top and front, with two rod-gongs attached to the bridge and the rest in a simple holder I made.  (I'm not showing the bow here.)

From the back; you can see the brass screws attached to the top of the rods as they are inserted into the bridge.

Close up of the bridge from the front… 

...and from the back.

Placement of the piezo mics and their output; notice they are asymmetrical.  You can also see the screws and washers attaching the wood block to the soundbox.   

As I say, I was pleased with the result, and with myself; I had had an idea for an instrument and had built it, at least a prototype.  Although I didn't think I was the first person to have the idea to bow a rod-gong, I did have the thought that maybe I might have done something fairly original.  

I've since learned that, well, it's unlikely.  

Of course, anyone with an education in twentieth century music can list a handful of pioneering instrument makers -- Harry Partch, the Baschet Brothers, Luigi Russolo, Lou Harrison, among others -- whose inventiveness pushed the boundaries of music, sculpture, and even art.  Unsurprisingly, their work inspired generations of others even more fascinated than me by how sound is created and propagated.  Too, Western musicologists have traveled the world exploring sound arts from folk to classical traditions of non-Western cultures, discovering the inventiveness of millennia of instrument making; the Sachs–Hornbostel system of instrument classification has over 300 basic categories and still doesn't capture everything.  

So, while it's possible -- only possible, I say -- that no one else has bolted a clock chime to a crafts box from Michael's, electrified it with piezos, and played it with a bow, it turns out my instrument fits neatly into a well-established class of sound-making devices.  It's a kind of idiophone, that is, instruments the body of which creates the initial vibrations (as opposed to a string, membrane, column of air, etc.), and of the subclass lamellaphone, where the vibrating body is anchored at one end (it turns out that the kalimba is in the same subclass).  There are examples of bowed lamellaphones, too, such as the nail violin and the daxophone.  

All of this I learned through a recent reading of Bart Hopkin's Musical Instrument Design, a fabulous book on principles of sound making that takes an impressively detailed overview of pretty much any kind of instrument you can imagine -- and a whole bunch you never did.  Mr. Hopkin has been designing and building instruments since the 1980s and knows of what he speaks; you can hear and see some of his work on YouTube.  I didn't know it when I was in high school, but I think what I really wanted then was to be Bart Hopkin.  

At this point in my life and my career(s), I know that's not gonna happen (I mean, it already did, right? -- he's Bart Hopkin!), but, to paraphrase what I said in my previous post, it doesn't matter whether I change the world, just that what I'm doing is meaningful.  I had a blast building and experimenting with my bowed clock chime and it has given me ideas for other sounds and music I want to make.  I plan on exploring those ideas when and as the chance takes me.  

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

The first day of my vacation, I woke up.  Then, I went downtown to look for a job.  Then, I hung out in front of the drug store.  The second day of my summer vacation, I woke up.  Then, I went downtown to look for a job.  Then, I hung out in front of the drug store.  The third day of my summer vacation, I woke up.  Then, I went downtown to look for a job.  Then I got a job keeping people from hanging out in front of the drug store... 

-- Cheech & Chong, "Sister Mary Elephant" from the album Big Bambu

I've had a desire to build musical instruments since at least high school, when, in my sophomore or junior year, I came across a book called The Physics of Music, a paperback binding of some Scientific American articles on the subject.  Simultaneous with its fomenting effect, the book also told me I couldn't possibly build instruments, as the pages were interspersed with mysterious squiggly mathematical symbols that supposedly meant important things to anyone smart enough to build musical instruments (I was one of those kids who believed I sucked at math).  Four or five years later, I found myself working for a piano restorer, eventually learning to rebuild player pianos, but even then I believed I didn't have what it took to be a "real" piano technician because I hadn't learned to tune pianos -- something that, again, at the time seemed utterly esoteric.  

In the four decades since my first thrill at the thought of making instruments, I've discovered that most of what I believed about my shortcomings was bullshit -- I'm decent at math and I can train my ear to hear anything below the range of my tinnitus -- and, perhaps more importantly, have come to believe that if you want to do a thing, you should just do it.*  Whether you're good at it or not doesn't really matter if it's meaningful to you.  

Still, even with that understanding, circumstances have been such that instrument making hasn't been logistically feasible for me -- until very recently.  As a result of a surprise largesse earlier this year, my wife and I decided to make some significant quality-of-life investments in our home:  we built a garden for her and a basement workshop for me.  Suddenly and unexpectedly, the dream of instrument building has become a reality!

In early July, I made plans to take the first full week in August off from my practice.  I'd spent my spare time since June building workbenches and my wife and I had organized the basement (she did the lion's share of that).  For Father's Day, I received an excellent book on musical instrument design.  Serendipitously, a musical instrument kit company I like had a sale, so I picked up a couple of kits.  By the time I started vacation, everything was set up and I could spend the week futzing about the workshop, making sawdust, gluing chunks of wood together, and getting shellac all over my fingers.  Pure joy.  

My efforts produced two objets de musique:  first, a bowed clock chime (my own design) and, second, a kalimba (the first of the two kits).  I'll write about those in more detail in separate posts (see links).  Also arising from this recent burst of inspiration was a piece composed for and performed on those instruments; I'll post about that separately, too.  

My fantasy has reified into fact.  I have ideas for several instruments in the queue:  a bowed psaltery (the second kit), a multistringed monochord (a zither-like instrument with many strings all tuned to the same pitch), a single-string, very long monochord (like 10 or 15 feet), aeolian harps of various sizes and design, didgeridoos, a very large spring reverb (like 10 feet -- technically not an instrument but an audio effect), and others.  Over the balance of my life, I hope to build many instruments, to make music with them, and, with luck, to share them with the local music community.  However the project goes, I'll be posting updates and developments here.  

*Within the limits of harm, of course.