Sunday, November 16, 2008

http://www.windworld.com/

I found this website recently, its pretty awesome.

The site has a whole bunch of information about experimental musical instruments, pictures and sound clips. One of my favorite instruments is Richard Water's Waterphone which uses a thin layer of water at the metallic base of the large instrument to subtly modulate the tones of connected brass rods which are played with a bow. My absolute favorite, however, would have to be "The Tree" by Nazim Ozel. This instrument is an actual tree, with very many branches, which has been meticulously rigged with hundreds of strings in every direction. The 800 or so strings encompass fixed tonal scales, microtonal scales, primitive and naive scales. Nazim's aim is to create a instrument which has a massive variety of sounds which can be played with many different techniques, such as bowing, striking, and plucking. The Tree is meant for what he calls "Free tonal" music. The massive size of the instrument creates an excellent interactive sound environment that can actually surround the player physically and that's just fantastic. Not to mention, the instrument is a Tree and i love trees very much. Nazim Ozel picked an especially beautiful tree as well. I would like to purchase one of these "Trees" but sadly they are not for sale, understandably. I couldn't afford it anyway. There are a few instruments on there that you can buy though, there are also instrument parts and information on creating your own instruments. So check it out!

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