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| I have a few basic needs in life - to make music and to eat. To
this end I created the carrot flute, which can fill both needs at once. The
sound of a bored-out carrot is surprisingly clear and piercing, but it is
usually short-lived due to my over-zealous appetite, which interrupts the
song with a crunch. With each bite, the pitch rises, and the appetite
decreases. Though the carrot flute is tasty in tone, it hardly constitutes
a balanced diet. Potato panpipes and apple ocarinas help, but it was
bullhorn kelp, a rope-like seaweed with a bulbous end, that gave me the
nutrients I truly needed. Seaweed has more minerals than any other plant -
and more musical uses, too!
The first kelp flute I tasted was an endblown shakuhachi-style morsel prepared by punching holes in the sun-baked seaweed with a rock I found on the beach near the kelp. Since then, I have made several hundred flutes, using an exacto knife to cut the mouthpieces and a soldering iron to burn the finger holes: fipple flutes and double flutes with baked fimo mouthpieces, transverse flutes set with stones or crystals to plug the end, ocarinas (out of the bulb-end), and a number of different reed and horn concoctions. For the flutes, the taper bore is slight, and the mouthpiece is placed on the wider end of the kelp. For the reed and horn instruments, the conical bore of kelp is ideal because it causes the overtone series to start with the octave (instead of with the fifth as in straight-bore instruments like the clarinet). The variations of kelp instruments of this sort include bamboo-reed horns with multiple drones, Shenai reed horns with gourd flares on the end, bugles, didgeridoos, and, of course, saxophones. The chromatic, deep-throated, reedy voice of my kelp sea sax (I use all ten fingers to produce this sound) is a distinctive texture in any musical soup. I have developed a unique recipe for making these organic saxophones, which I share with you as follows: Ingredients: a piece of bull kelp, approximately 2 1/2 feet long an exacto knife a soldering iron or wood burner an old bicycle tube a bicycle pump a hose clamp 1/2"-1" in diameter an alto sax mouthpiece (bought or made from bamboo, wood, or plastic) To find the kelp, take a walk on the beach. The piece you want should be intact with a bulbous end and a skinny tail. It is okay if it is bent or flattened as long as it has no holes or cracks. (This next part is a trade secret; don't tell anyone.) Place the kelp in a bath of warm water until it is soft and pliable (1-3 hours). Cut the valve stem from the bicycle tube and cut off the tail of the kelp until the valve stem fits snugly inside. Secure the valve stem by clamping the hose-clamp around the kelp. Pump the kelp up with air until it is firm, and leave it in a warm place to dry for a couple of days. (Allowing the kelp to dry while it is inflated insures a perfect inner bore.) Cut the thin end of the kelp where its diameter will fit inside of your alto mouthpiece, and cut off the other end near the bulb. Tune the lowest note by cutting the kelp shorter with a knife. Make and tune the finger holes by piercing the kelp with the soldering iron and reaming out the holes. Finish with a glaze of shellac to protect against moisture and spit. (Serving suggestions: try it with conch in an ocean drum base.) Once the basic needs are taken care of, one has leisure to play and to dream. When I was a child, my favorite play was with bicycles, so it's not surprising that, when I became a man, my love of this wheeled toy attracted me to the possibilities of the wheel as a rhythm instrument on which the rhythms "play themselves" as the wheel spins around. Thus, my love of bicycles cross-pollinated with my love of creating instruments to produce a number of offspring: the bell wheel, the Rumitone, the Orbitone, and the Soundcycle, among others. I discovered the eerie sound of bowed spokes a few years ago when I was fixing a flat on my mountain bike. (Bicycles are still my favorite toy). When the newly inflated tube brushed against the spokes of my bicycle, the wheel played a repeating phrase. Delighted, I began experimenting with adding other sounds to the wheel, trying out all sorts of clackers and whistles until I settled on telephone bells - and the bell wheel was born. By grinding or thinning I tuned the bells to microtonal intervals and arranged them on the rim of the wheel (which is placed horizontally). Thirty-six spokes suggested I should use polyrhythms of thirty-six. I play the bell wheel by holding a sounder (a chopstick or bow) in contact with the spinning bells with one hand, while manipulating the speed of rotation with the other. By adjusting the level of the sounder and its proximity to the wheel, I can manipulate and isolate different tones and rhythms. For example, by holding a striker so that only one of the bells hits it as the wheel spins around, a pulse is created. By holding another striker at a different location on the wheel, a counter pulse is created which can get closer or farther from the first sound as I move the striker around the rim, creating this effect: ding.........dong.........ding.....dong...........ding...dong.............ding.d ong............... The ringing bells give off a distinct Doppler oscillation as they revolve. .................Eciting the bells with a bow produces a cascade of oscillating harmonics. A stick or clapper draws out a percussive attack and the recognizable telephone ring. The spokes are played with the same sounders as the bells and are tuned by tensioning. Once when I tightened a spoke too far, trying to get that high C, I discovered that a missing spoke created a rest in the rhythm. Also, the more out of true the rim, the more interesting and subtle the sound. The spokes always keep perfect time with the bells, so several different sounds can be played simultaneously, all keeping the same relative rate of speed and creating a repeating phrase which is always speeding up or slowing down. Extra weight on the rim keeps the spin going for a long time, and a metal resonating dish welded to the underside of the wheel greatly increases the volume. Having reinvented the wheel, I was seized with excitement about the possibilities of salvaged bicycle parts. I became a bicycle scrounge and a sculptor of more and more complex bicycle-based instruments. The Rumitone, for instance, is an hourglass-shaped, stainless steel resonating chamber strung with piano wire and mounted upright to a stationary bike. The performer "rides" the bike, holding a bow to the strings, which spin at varying rates of speed according to the energy applied to the pedaling. The instrument is tuned as a drone with multiple tonics and fifths with one additional dissonant note which, like a broken spoke, gives a pulse to the sound. Positioning the bow up and down the strings isolates harmonics, taking the timbre from a pleasant riverlike sound in the fundamental range up to an ecstatic whirling howl of upper partials as the bicycle rider pedals furiously. The Rumitone takes its name from Jallaladin Rumi, the thirteenth century Sufi poet who founded the Whirling Dervishes and who wrote, A secret turning in us makes the universe turn. Head unaware of feet, and feet head. Neither cares. They keep turning. The secret of a wheel instrument is certainly in its turning. Rumi had it right, and he would have relished the Orbitone, which flips the player around and around, head over heels, disorienting the awareness of head and feet. Children love this sensation; they'll spin till they fall down, so it should be no surprise that the Orbitone was inspired by a toy for children. This one was a very sophisticated toy, an "acrobatic swing" designed and built by my grandfather in the 1950's for my mom and her four siblings when they were children. It consisted of a steel triangular frame with two bearings welded to the crossbar. Extending down from these bearings were two steel bars (instead of ropes or chains) with a crossbar and foot plates where the rider stood, feet and waist strapped in, heart in throat, preparing to flip all the way up and over and around and around. (For years my aunt Sharon held the record at 300 consecutive flips before a younger brother usurped her position.) In honor of my grandfather and as a collaboration with my partner, choreographer Leah Mann, I made my own version of this swing - a musical one that is portable. Instead of bearings around the cross bar, I used an axle supported by bearings on either side of the structure. The swing part that the musician/dancer/acrobat/performer stands on is basically the same, except for a simple system of horizontal bars that hook around the ankles to hold the feet in place. Extending from the axle opposite the swing are two fork-like bars that hold bellwheels which spin via a bicycle chain (the bicycle scrounge scores again!) attached to the structure of the swing set. As the Orbitone moves, the wheels not only spin on their axles, but also orbit around on the opposite side from the performer. The tempo of the bellwheels is always in direct correlation to the tempo of the swing. Also, as the swing moves backward, the sound plays backward. But the Orbitone is not merely a mechanical instrument, like a music box. As with all musical instruments, the quality of its music is dependent on the player. Leah persuades the swing to be graceful in its movements and specific in its shape; Leah dancing with the Orbitone is a hummingbird in the air. I, on the other hand, interact with it like a horse and rider in full gallop. Together Leah and I imbue the Orbitone with a lithe and whimsical chase-like play that has us climbing, swinging, flipping, and orbiting around the Orbitone. Again, Rumi says it best: "[They] turn as the sun and the moon turn, circling what they love." The Orbitone as a member of the "wheel instrument" family reveals its genealogy best when it is spinning. The Soundcycle, on the other hand, is recognizable immediately as a descendent of the bicycle. Capable of creating eleven different sounds at the same time, it has a triangular form of three independently rolling wheels, one of which, though set in the back, drives and steers the Soundcycle. (This wheel is a unicycle in a headset bearing.) An ornate spiraling steel frame; two chain-driven, independently turning bellwheels (containing thirty-six bells, six chimes and one steel string); two plectrum-plucked, revolving tined canisters; and a rainhoop steering wheel complete the contraption. Set in motion, the Soundcycle is like Apollo's chariot gone mad, as though the gold brilliance of the sun flashing against its gold-bright wheels and curling lines were setting off a wild jangle of bells struck, bowed and clanged, giving sound to the harnessing of the sun's rays for a mad dash across the sky! Riding it, Leah and I become like gods, dancing arms together like snake charmers, climbing over each other to take turns pedaling, driving our chariot in circles, turning and bending and dancing, and all the while the Soundcycle, visually dazzling in circles and spirals, loops and swirls, is aurally brilliant with a madhouse of music, an indescribable multitude of complex sounds. So I eat, I make music, I play - and I dream. In my dream I am standing in a thickly foliated forest next to a large plant that has huge leaves radiating from a central pod, through which a strange kind of stamen twists and sways. Now I am putting a bow to this stamen and playing it like an instrument, swaying with the music. I am one with music and nature. Out of this dream came the Stamenphone, a sixteen-string, bowed, metal sculpture. As with many of my pieces, I started with an image (a plant stamen) from which I created a form which I wanted to make musical (in this case by adding music wire). Then, having created a musical instrument, I learned from it how to play it. Over the years, the Stamenphone has gathered integrity and complexity as an instrument, though it has remained essentially the same in form and design. Devised in concept to be suspended from the ceiling, it is constructed from two stainless steel bowls welded into an orb-like resonating chamber and set in an ornamental framework of rebar and steel rods. A crown of cast bronze leaves emphasizes the plant motif and also serves as the top bridge for the piano wire strings. For two years I played this instrument like a bowed zither, each string providing one note. Then I took a physics course in college (I had made the Stamenphone in my junior year at the Atlanta College of Art) and, studying Pythagorus' monochord and other aspects of the physics of sound, I had the idea to play the Stamenphone by touching the harmonic nodes. After restringing it with higher tension piano wire, I made a map of the nodes by painting a little dot of white on each as a visual guide for playing. This worked so well that I restrung the instrument again to maximize the range of notes that could be played consecutively and ended up with an instrument with sixteen strings and a range of five octaves. The strings are divided into four quadrants of four, each side being tuned to a different mode or scale. I change the tuning depending on the music I wish to play. The tuning gear has also been significantly improved to work with the thick strings. I started out using bolts with holes drilled in them to wind up the strings. Now I make tuning gear by grinding a groove in the head of a bolt so that the end loop on the wire can pass around the neck of the bolt and sit in the groove. The bolt is passed through a bracket below the bridge and a nut is screwed on so that tightening the nut pulls the string tighter. I have experimented extensively with different wire gauges and now use 19 up to 25 gauge, a whole step being one gauge thinner and a half step being half a gauge thinner (25-24 1/2). I do not use wound strings, as the winding interferes with the harmonics. Because harmonic notes keep ringing even when the finger has left the string, the Stamenphone has a distinct, slowly decaying resonance unlike any other bowed instrument. Playing harmonics also allows multiple notes to ring out in a chord, not by playing three strings at once, but by playing one note after another and letting them fade. The strings on the side of the instrument not being played serve as sympathetic strings, adding to the resonant, long-ringing character of the instrument. Having first dreamed the Stamenphone, then built it, then learned to play it, I next needed to develop its fully mature, musical/mystical potential, and for that I turned to the trancelike beauty of classical Indian music, in which sighing notes and sustaining tones are intricately woven in a fabric of drones. I found a teacher and learned to weave the fibers of the Stamenphone into the dhrupad form, making a raga rug of metallic tones. Through these lessons I discovered how to bend the pitch of the Stamenphone by pressing on the nodes. This made the instrument sigh and soar, sitar-like. Because the lower strings of the Stamenphone are also the lowest tension strings, I found I could bend an interval of a major third. Not only is this technique critical for the Indian music; it has also given the instrument the full chromatic range available in all five octaves. And so the Stamenphone, which originated in a dream, grew up in a physics class, and found maturity in Indian ragas, induces a dreamy state in the listener, who seems to be standing in a thickly foliated forest next to a large plant with huge leaves radiating from a central pod and who, listening, becomes one with music and nature. In such a dream state, all things are possible; as Rumi says, "Reasons for holding back fly off like doves," so the three of us (the Stamenphone, Leah and I) suspend ourselves from a hanging bearing. We let go, we float, we suspend our bodies and our disbelief, our acceptance of limits, our attachment to our earthbound nature. At the still point of the turning world, T. S. Eliot says, there is no difference between the dancer and the dance, and in this case there is no difference between the dancers, the dance, the music, and the instrument. I nurtured the Stamenphone from a dream and watched it grow from steel form to instrument to music to flying dance, and like a father who learns from his child, I have become a pupil of my own creation. If it is no surprise to those who know me that the wheel instruments have their origin in bicycles, it is also no surprise that the form of the Stamenphone comes from Nature, for if music satisfies my three basic needs - to eat, to play, and to dream - it does so only in the context of the natural world. The forms, shapes, and ornamental motifs I use are inspired by organic forms. I go out of my way to make curves instead of straight lines, and rounded edges instead of squares. Figuring out how these forms are musical and heightening this musicality through modifications, additions, and playing techniques are other steps in the creative process. In this way, function follows form. The instruments are often surprising in their tone and timbre (the surprise that such strange objects can make such evocative music is an integral part of my performance aesthetic), but their music is as organic to each as the howl to the wolf or the song of the whale to that great mammal of the deep. Nature is inspiration for my music (and the basis for the themes of my performances); it is also the unlimited playground and crafts shop where I find both the music and the instruments. In spite of all the fancy things I've learned to do with bicycle parts and welders, my truly favorite kind of instrument is one that has grown of its own accord. Once I discovered a field of miniature seed pod rattles which I distributed to participants in a coming-of-age ritual for a boy in our family. With the subtle, delicately textural buzzing, humming, and shaking of hundreds of little seeds, we created a spontaneous atmosphere for initiation. Another time, pausing for a moment on a tiny island in Lake Lanier, I put out my hand and picked up a naturally hollowed, branch flute which could be beautifully played with no alterations. Another time, on a camping trip, I located an original thumb piano, a piece of cedar that was partially split so that it had a thin tong that could be plucked with the thumb of one hand while the other hand fingered it like a string, giving melodic potential to the woody tones. The apotheosis of these musical instruments discovered in their natural state is in my "rock" music. As with the bell wheel and the Orbitone, the origin of these rock instruments is in the play of my childhood - the sculptures, cairns, and impossibly balanced towers I was constantly building out of rocks. Now, as a professional artist, I have discovered that rocks have not only a beauty of form but an inherent music as well. On a mountain bike adventure in the Cascades east of Seattle, I found a ridge-line vein of resonant rock that flaked off in thin sheets. When held at the node and struck, these thin bars of stone had a clear, loud musical ring. After "rocking out" beside the trail I collected a set of six pieces that approximated a pentatonic scale and toted them home. To my delight, they turned out to be easy to drill and to grind, and I quickly tuned them to concert pitch. I returned later to the ridge on foot and packed out seventy pounds of such rocks, walking the last four miles under the starlight, accompanying myself with the clinking of stone. Out of this stockpile of resonant stones I have made a one-octave, chromatic, xylophone-type instrument (which is set on pieces of moss [or foam] and struck with other stones) as well as several sets of wind chimes and hanging musical mobiles. The Sine Stones (or Sign Stones), on the other hand, were chosen for beauty and size, not for sound, and were collected from many places - creek beds in the Cascades, river banks in the Siskiyous, the coasts of Oregon and Washington. These river rocks are suspended by thin music wire from a wooden sound box hung near the ceiling and calibrated by weight (about 12-15 pounds each) by hanging several stones of different sizes together. I went through considerable trouble to drill a hole through each rock so that it could be suspended and am often asked why I didn't just wrap the rocks with wire instead, but the simple, clean line of the wire running through a hole in the rock has been worth the hours of drilling and the multiple broken drill bits. The stones hang in an arch, or rainbow, arrangement because it is a visually striking form and because it gives the necessary gradated lengths for tuning. The instrument, which is tuned almost exclusively by the length of the wire and is played by stroking the strings with rosin-coated gloves, creating a longitudinal vibration, is set up in two distinct modes, one side of the arch being tuned to a major or minor scale and the other side to a pattern of half step, minor third, half step, minor third, etc. Having adjacent notes a third apart allows me to play chords with both hands. Because I chose stones primarily by beauty and size and arranged them by color and texture, fading them from darker greens and blues with angular shapes on one side to smooth ovals of light pinks and creams on the other side, the instrument is stunning to behold when it's not being played. But it is even more amazing in action because the rocks turn and sway as the player strokes and coaxes music from the strings. The Sine Stones require such a delicate touch and preciseness to keep the rocks from knocking together or the strings from breaking that the dance of swaying hands and stones and the exquisite tones of the music take on a deliberateness that is akin to meditation. This is not a virtuosic instrument in terms of speed, number of notes, or complexity of layout; its virtue is in its haiku-like ability to sound one note so purely and beautifully and in the corresponding visual impact of form and movement. My desire with my work has always been to combine forms - not only food and flutes or wheels and bells but, more encompassingly, sculpture and music. All my sculptures are musical instruments, and every musical instrument I make is sculpted with attention to its visual line and form. With this interest in combining forms, is it any wonder that when I, musician and sculptor, met Leah Mann, dancer and choreographer extraordinaire, I entered a long-term collaboration with her (7 years artistic peer, spouse since May) that has profoundly influenced the direction of my work? In her I have found a wealth of knowledge of physical performance and a wellspring of ability for dance and movement that have brought a new dimension to the world of making and playing instruments. Leah has given these instruments that which all inanimate objects must yearn for: movement. She has discovered ways to transcend the difficulty of playing and manipulating a steel hoop, ball or swing. She dances with the abstract beauty of effortless movement. She has taught me how to bring the bowing or plucking of a string into the entire body so that each note is played out from hand to torso through toe. Together Leah and I are pioneering a new genre of "musicalmovement," which might best be explained with "Balloonjarrattledrum," a dance piece that takes its name from the balloonjarrattledrum, an instrument which is made in the following manner: Stretch a balloon over the mouth of a jar; tighten to tune. It's a pluckdrum. Add beebee's for shaking and rattling. Now Pluck it. Rub it. Honk it. Shake it. Roll it. Tap it. Knock it. Break it. Sweep it! Make it again. The performers in our piece do not play ballonjarrattledrums like back-up singers in a rock (the other kind of rock) band with gourd shakers. Leah and I together have composed the music of and choreographed the dance for this piece in which the movements of the players create the rhythm and the melody of the music. The five dancer/musicians knock the jars on the floor, roll them to each other, pluck them under their arms - in short, they dance, and by dancing they produce polyrhythmic and sequenced patterns of music and of movement, canons and monophonic melodies arising from the dance, as though the musical notes, like the rhythms, were inherent in the body. In creating this new genre, Leah and I have had to struggle with the sacrifices each has to make to bring two or three disciplines together. As a dancer it is limiting to Leah to have to hold and play an instrument; as a musician, it is difficult for me to play while trying to move (gracefully and with intention). But in the evolution of this new genre, we are discovering an unexpected new vocabulary of movement and sound which comes from working within these limits. And nothing could be more exciting. It is a natural extension of the same creative process that turned carrots and seaweed as well as steel and rocks into music. It is to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience, as Joyce said, and to forge the uncreated conscience of a new art. It is to be bold enough just to begin: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it," Goethe said. "Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." click here to find out more about Ela's music, listen to a sample track, and find out how to order CDs. |