Some time ago I gathered a set of stainless steel drinking water bottles, tuned them by adding suitable amounts of water, and hung them on a frame for playing by percussion. They were the kind of water bottle that has an inner and an outer shell for insulation. These often have a particularly captivating sound, with the water moving within after striking and modulating the tone in an enchanting way. The set is now in my back yard, out there with a lot of other instruments, hopefully weatherproof ones, residing outdoors because interior space for instruments is in short supply. Some of the other instruments nearby are among my more interesting ones and I take some pride in showing them off to people who visit: “See how this one works? – Isn’t that cool?” I’m less inclined to show off the water bottles. They sound lovely, but conceptually they’re commonplace; just a found-object percussion set. Yet when people visit my yard, their attention seems to be drawn immediately to the water bottles. Why them and not the other instruments nearby? I don’t know; perhaps it’s just that they’re relatable as a familiar object rather than some abstract new form, and everyone quickly gets the idea of water-bottle percussion. In those moments, when I see visitors gravitating to the water bottles, I might think (but don’t say), “Wait a minute, those aren’t the cool ones; you’re supposed to be interested in this other thing over here; it’s way more sophisticated!”
Of course “found-object instrument” need not translate as unsophisticated. Many makers bring real skill and imagination to the work. Even when found-object instruments are simple or obvious in conception, they often turn out to be fresh and alluring and engaging sound-wise. Take a stroll through the world with open ears and hands and you’ll find many ready-made sounds worth the listening. Some people have cultivated the combination of ear and intellect, curiosity and imagination, that allows them to consistently find their way to the most interesting sounds, along with the eye and skill to put them together in ways that are visually and intellectually engaging.
This excellent approach to sound exploration, however, is not my own. Instead, in instrument making, I’m happiest when I can start with the elemental questions, “How can we set up an audible vibration? And are there ways we can do this that are manipulable in sonically interesting ways?” In the ideal I’d like to start from first principles, conceiving, designing and building from the ground up. The idea would be to come up with some way to generate a disturbance in the air, and then find ways to modulate frequency, volume, timbre, stop-start, or other qualities for musical effect. For me, this way of thinking is what seems most exciting.
As a relatively pure example (and we’ll soon see that most cases are not very pure at all), I can put forth one of my early instruments called Savart’s Wheel. For that instrument I started with the question “Hmm… what’s the simplest physical mechanism I can come up with for an events-per-second machine … something which can make some physical event happen at controllable frequencies within the hearing range?” This is a challenge, because “in the hearing range” means whatever is happening needs to happen at least dozens of times per second, and more typically hundreds of times per second. What I arrived at was in effect a tuned rasp. Here the event in question is a stick or plectrum hitting one of the ridges on a ridged surface as it scrapes across. To picture this, think of a sort of oversized plectrum which can also serve as a sound-radiating surface – a playing card will serve. Drag it across a ridged surface so that the ridge-bumping frequency falls in the hearing range. That ridge-bumping frequency corresponds to the pitch that the ear recognizes. If you could drag faster or slower to produce different ridge-bumping frequencies in a sufficiently controlled way, you could generate scales and melodies. Savart’s Wheel is basically a mechanism for doing this in a way that makes the ridge-bumping frequency dependably controllable, moving from one steady frequency to another. The sound is, to most people’s ears, exquisitely obnoxious – but the pitch is clear and you can indeed play melodically and even quite expressively (especially if the sentiments you wish to express are on the aggressive side). You can learn more about the instrument here, and from there if you wish you can follow additional links to still more documentation.
In the development of Savart’s Wheel, the final design followed fairly directly from the initial conception. It was an unusually straightforward case of moving linearly from first principals to a functioning instrument. Most of the time things aren’t nearly so clear. Typically when a design idea in the abstract sends me to the shop to work through the possibilities, the process is anything but linear. Some things don’t work as hoped, or there’s some technical obstacle blocking progress. Twists and turns ensue, and more often than not the path leads to an end result quite different from the original vision. The sounds ultimately arrived at, too, are frequently very different from the original expectation. The process is often frustrating, sometimes rewarding in unexpected ways, and always interesting.
In the end (and now we’re coming full circle with the subject of this article) there’s an exploratory quality to this process that is much akin to the sense of exploration that fuels found-object instrument seeking and making. The two approaches – found sound vs conceiving and designing from first principles — seemingly different in motivation, process and result – are in the end animated by much the same spirit. Good sounds may arise either way.