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.