From Toraja With Love

This is a flute specimen I obtained from Tana Toraja, Sulawesi. It looks like an ordinary bamboo traverse flute with 6 fingerholes, but with very nice and colorful finishing touch. The bamboo itself is very thin,thus producing its particular sound. I'm not sure how it is supposed to be played, but I think this traditional Toraja melody is always good on any flute. Listen to its sound here.

Toraja Flute.mp3

Sea-urchin-o-phone

This is an instrument I created last year, made from a sea urchin shell. I applied thick internal lacquer to the shell as naturally, the sea urchin shell is very porous and not suitable for a wind instrument. After sealing the pores completely, I shaped the embouchure hole, and drill 4 finger holes in it following John Taylor's ocarina design.

With this scheme, the instrument, pitched in concert C, is capable of producing 1 fully chromatic octave. However, with the open, flute style embouchure hole (as opposed to the flageolet ocarina style embouchure hole), lipping technique can bring the low notes of this instrument all the way to G below the treble staff.

Sound sample is here:

Seaurchinophone.mp3

H P Lovecraft

It has been a while since the last update on this blog. The 2nd half of the year has always been a very busy time for musicians. For me, I have been through some recitals of my works, a major annual concert of St Laurentius Chamber Orchestra, an ABRSM exam, Yamaha exam, another experimental instrument, and off course, many "entertainment" performance, music arranging, and loads of teaching.

In the middle of this crazy schedule, my movie-director friend, Marqy requires a score for an adaptation of a story by H.P. Lovecraft, The Horror at Redhook. It is basicaly a rambling story about a demonic cult that exists in our time (or Lovecraft's time to be exact). He renamed Redhook as Pasir Merah for the Indonesian adaptation, but I haven't read the script yet. So I turn on the mic and record some sounds after reading the original story, and here is the result:

Pasir Merah.mp3 (Size 1.46Mb)

The Flutarina

Behold, a new generation of wind instrument has arrived! Well, it is my original design, the flutarina, a flute - ocarina hybrid. It's made of bamboo, which is a traditional material for flutes. It also has the flute embouchure hole. But the embouchure hole is located right in middle of the instrument, making the acoustic closer to ocarinas than flutes.

Unlike standard ocarinas, the hole placement counts. Finger hole further away from the embouchure hole produces lower pitch. But
unlike flutes, the hole size plays more important role than location.

This instrument has 9 finger holes, 2 of which are the natural hole formed by bamboo ends, operated by thumbs. It is pitched in Eb, with a range of approximately from middle C up to Bb (nearly 2 octaves). Just like ocarinas, overblowing doesn't work on this instrument.

It features internal lacquer (white colored), embouchure hole and finger holes inlays, bamboo-tree carving, and a matte-lacquer finish. I haven't figure out all of the fingerings yet, but I believe full chromatic should be possible. Because it is basically a stopped pipe, its length is about half of that required for a flute with the same pitch. May I call it the eco-flute?

Another nice thing about it is its extreme ability to pitch bend. And the thumb-operated end-holes can serve as a special effect device simillar with the koudi (The koudi is a very very short flute with no fingerhole used to imitate bird songs).

How about the sound? Well, you be the judge. Listen to the sound here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?vdemmtztxxy

Trumpet Multiphonics

I figured that using a funny embouchure and fine control, it is possible to play multiphonics on the trumpet, especially in the high register. The sound is unstable and not very musical, just like any other wind instrument multiphonics. But I guess a good composer out there might find a good use for this unique voice, and a good player might figure out how to do it reliably.

Listen to it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?w0gmzz4jymm

If you don't get it, it is the vibrating sound between the two notes. It is unstable as it easily drops into either one of the more stable tones. But when everything is correct, the funny vibration comes. I know it sounds weird because of the funny embouchure involved, but it is an ordinary Bb trumpet, a Constellation, not a clarinet or some weird custom-made instrument. And, No! It doesn't involve playing while singing the 2nd note.

Shakuhachi Project

I finished my first Shakuhachi, the Japanese traditional end-blown flute.

Following the "standard" specification, it has 5 equal sized finger holes, beautifully arranged at even spacing of 1/10th of the flute's length.

After drilling the bamboo nodes to create a continuous pipe, the bamboo was initiated with fire. The heat treatment process left burn marks on the bamboo, which I found aesthetically appeasing.

The next step is cutting the utaguchi (blowing edge) at the end of the bamboo. Finally, the finger holes were drilled. Fine tuning was done by adjusting the finger hole size and adding or removing materials from the bore.

For finishing, the word Shakuhachi (in Japanese character) was inlaid at the back of the utaguchi. Then three strips of rattan binding was introduced. The strips served as decoration as well as adding some strength to the bamboo.

Finally, a thin layer of lacquer was applied to give the bamboo a nice, smooth, shiny appearance. Listen to the sound of this instrument here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?xogmvzcuxst

USB from hell

In the middle of the night, when I was recording the last track for the ending credit of the movie KURSInya, my mic started to introduce a very annoying constant clicking noise. It was rather loud and occurs approximately every half second.

Tinkering with the cable connections did not help, so I decided to open the microphone. Due to its weird construction (it is a cheap dynamic microphone) I had to cut the cables to take out the mic out of its casing. I found that wiring the mic ground connection into a large, electrically isolated body reduces the noise. So I proceeded and finished the recording session.

However, the problem persists. The noise is reduced, but never fall to zero. The worst thing about it is I cannot put the mic back into its casing (I still cannot find a way to open it). So it is now hanging, naked on the stand.

Today I found that unplugging my USB printer from the computer eliminates the noise completely ...