WHY SCRAPE?

Why Scrape is a tuned set of hard plastic rods, mounted with one fixed end on a board, played by scraping with a notched stick or comb. The tone is noisy, and in the complexity of the sound the pitch often isn’t very clear. Also, the pitch varies with the location of the scraping action along the rod, making it easy either to do interesting pitch bends or, more commonly, to unintentionally play out of tune by not scraping in just the right place. For these reasons, while it is possible to play melodically on this instrument, you’ll often do better by just going at it in search of odd and interesting sounds, relationships and patterns. The range is chromatic over 2+ octaves.

For more on scraped instruments, see here.

 

In the audio clip, Why Scrape is heard in duet with Spomo-Lo.