Eclectic Perambulations in the Noosphere
An improvised performance by Mark Korven on the mega bass waterphone.
Richard Waters is the inventor of the waterphone.
Waterphones are in fact stainless steel and bronze monolithic, one-of-a-kind, acoustic, tonal-friction instruments that utilize water in the interior of their resonators to bend tones and create water echos. In the world family of musical instruments, the Waterphone is between a Tibetian Water Drum, an African Kalimba (thumb piano) and a 16th century Peg or Nail Violin.
“Ringing Rocks” (20 miles east of Butte, Montana) is one of the most unusual rock formations in the country. A similar "ringing rock" formation exists in Pennsylvania. Folks from all over travel the three-mile gravel road north of I-90 just to pound on Montana's version of "Ringing Rocks" with hammers.
Nobody knows for sure exactly why the rocks ring like bells when struck with a hammer. The rocks do contain a significant amount of iron, which might be part of the explanation. However, the high iron content doesn’t explain two other strange qualities that the rocks possess . . . Not all of the rocks ring when struck, and they don’t ring when they are removed from the site, suggesting that the ringing has something to do with the way the rocks lay against one another. Larger flat ones seem to produce an especially impressive sound when struck.
"My primary activity has been focused around my installation the Long String Instrument, in which rosin-coated fingers brush across dozens of metallic strings, producing a chorus of minimal organ-like overtones which has been compared to the experience of standing inside an enormous grand piano. Chris Bohn, editor of The Wire, wrote of the Long String Instrument,
“Listening to it, you feel like you are inside some cyclopean subterranean grotto… its bejewelled walls glistening with an alien lustre (and) sounding like something that shimmers, iridescent shapes bend conventional pulse-based time and impose their own paradoxical temporality, where constant movement teems within a vast stasis.” "
Ellen Fullman
"In August 1954, at age of 77 Pablo Casals (1876-1973) performed Bach's G-Major Cello Solo at Abbaye "Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa", a Catholic monastery located south of the small town Prades in France.
Pau Casals i Defilló (December 29, 1876 – October 22, 1973), known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time. He made many recordings throughout his career, of solo, chamber, and orchestral music, also as conductor, but he is perhaps best remembered for the recordings of the Bach Cello Suites he made from 1936 to 1939."
Click on any of the instrument names below to see and hear some of my instruments.
In addition to making and playing, my work with invented instruments includes an interest in unusual instruments worldwide. I’ve produced several books and CDs on instrument construction and who’s-doing-what in the world of creative instrument making. You can find these resources in the catalog pages of the Experimental Musical Instruments web site.
"The Las Piñas Bamboo Organ in the parish church of Saint Joseph in Las Piñas City, Philippines, is a nineteenth-century church organ made almost entirely from bamboo. Only the horizontal trumpet stops are made from metal.
The builder of both the church and its organ was Father Diego Cera de la Virgen del Carmen, a priest under the Augustinian Recollects. A native of Spain, he served as parish priest in Las Piñas from 1795 to 1830. Historians portray him as a gifted man, a natural scientist, chemist, architect, community leader, as well as organist and organ builder.[3]
Having previously built organs in the Manila area with some organ stops made of bamboo, he chose bamboo for most of this organ: only the trumpet stops are made of metal. The choice of bamboo was probably both practical and aesthetic - bamboo was abundant and used for hundreds of items of both a practical and an artistic nature.
Fr. Cera began work on the organ in 1816, while the church was still under construction. The church was completed in 1819 and the organ, in 1821, but without the trumpet stops. The organ was finally completed in 1824 after Fr. Cera decided to use metal for the trumpets whose character he cannot reproduce with bamboo."
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE : Thursday, August 25, 2011
"We had a raid," he said, "with federal marshals that were armed, that came in, evacuated our factory, shut down production, sent our employees home and confiscated wood."
"We're in this really incredible situation. We have been implicated in wrongdoing and we haven't been charged with anything," he says. "Our business has been injured to millions of dollars. And we don't even have a court we can go to and say, 'Look, here's our position.'"
Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz
Listen to the Story via npr.org
