Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Instrument Builders Scrounge for Sounds

Instrument Builders Scrounge for Sounds
Producer: Catherine Girardeau
TRT 4:11 with music fade out at end

[MUSIC: Mobius Operandi, End of the Dial, ?Now Only?]

Oliver DiCicco: My name is Oliver DiCicco, I am an instrument builder, sculptor, designer. I was a recording engineer for a long time, and I have tried to marry my love of building things and music together and started building musical instruments.

[music: Bart Hopkin, Instrumentarium Hopkinis, ?Embert, Rumel & Frumentus?]
Bart Hopkin: I am Bart Hopkin, I am the guy that runs something called Experimental Musical Instruments, ... People all over the place making all kinds of interesting things with which to make music.

[sound: outdoor ambi from Bart?s porch: birds, wind chimes]

NARRATOR: I visited these two experimental instrument builders in their workshops because I wanted to see, and hear, how they choose the building blocks of their sonic art. I asked Bart Hopkin what he looks for in choosing materials to build musical instruments.

Bart Hopkin: ...there is a certain amount of mythology or fairytale about this, when people talk about Stradivarius and his famous varnishes and this kind of stuff, There is undoubtedly some truth to that, but a lot of it is ...more romantic than scientific. But yes, different sound materials make a big difference.

[SOUND: CG field recording, Bart plays Aquavina]

Bart Hopkin: So I make a lot of sound things myself. ?Most musical instruments begin with an initial vibrating body of some sort, and somehow that pattern of oscillation has to get into the air and get into people?s ears. ...I am thinking a lot about mechanics.

Narrator: It doesn't matter if he's talking about a Stradivarius or Styrofoam - when he's going to make an instrument, Hopkin sees ?stuff? mainly as it relates to how it will produce sound.

[SOUND: STYROFOAM COOLER HARP]

Narrator: Like this Styrofoam cooler strung with rubber bands. This humble instrument embodies many of the sound-making properties Hopkin has been explaining.

[BART: Steel string guitar, CD?After Seven Years?, ?Robinson?]

Narrator: Hopkin explains some of the qualities that make different materials produce sounds differently.

Bart Hopkin: a very, very important feature of different sounding materials is internal damping... the matter of how readily do waves propagate in the material as opposed to dissipating themselves mostly into heat.

..Things that do not have a lot of internal damping will sustain vibrations much longer. Damping usually affects high frequencies ? so that materials that have very little internal damping tend to have much brighter sound.

Bart Hopkin: Here?s an example: the difference between a nylon string guitar and a steel string guitar.

[SOUND: PLUCKING STEEL STRING]

The steel string guitar has these ringing tones. They sustain well, and they have more high frequencies.

[SOUND: PLUCKING NYLON STRING]
the nylon string guitar is more warm and woody.

[MUSIC: Bart Hopkin, acoustic guitar, After Seven Years, ?Plousch?

A lot of that is simply because the nylon strings themselves have greater internal damping than the very, very, very hard steels that are used in steel strings nowadays.

[Sound: power tools, saws etc., Oliver?s shop]

Narrator: When Bart Hopkin looks at stuff for building instruments, he?s looking mainly for how well it?s going to work in a musical instrument. Designer and musical sculptor Oliver DiCicco, on the other hand, is just as concerned with how his raw materials are going to look as he is with how they?ll sound.

Music: ?End of the Dial?, Track: Oovulation
Oliver DiCicco:
Some of it has to do with just the tools that I have and the capacity I have to work with certain materials, and that dictates a lot of how things look.

He also thinks about whether he has the right tools to work with the material, and whether he can afford to use it. But it all comes down to this:

MUSIC: Bart Hopkin, Instrumentarium Hopkinis, ?Aquavina & Cowbells?

Narrator: Although they spend a lot of time shaping, crafting and wrestling with materials, both DiCicco and Hopkin have made instruments that incorporate water, an unpredictable element that can?t be sanded, shaped, or fixed.

Narrator: Hopkin shows me his vaguely lute-shaped instrument, played on the lap, made out of a steel mixing bowl?

Bart Hopkin: ...with some rigid brazing rods brazed on to it, ...you play these...brazing rods with a bow, the vibration is transmitted to the body of this vessel.

Narrator: The bottom of the bowl, which contains water, acts like a diaphragm, a surface that vibrates in response to sound.

[SOUND: ?Sirens? recorded at SoMarts]

Narrator: This is DiCicco?s most recent water sculpture, ?Sirens. It?s basically eleven U-shaped arcs with tubes inside and penny whistles at the ends of the tubes. Motors rock the arcs back and forth, moving the water, which pushes air out of the tubes through the penny whistles.

Oliver DiCicco:

The sound that this instrument was making, the test piece, sounded like whales. So I thought well, maybe I will make it look like the ribs of a whale, because they are going to be these U-shaped pieces anyhow.

Oliver DiCicco: Yeah, it has got that U-shape, almost like a tuning fork in a way.

What I liked about it was that the movement is totally random, ebb and flow in and out of phase.

[Sound ? bart music 3, 18:53: Bart, Instrumentarium Hopkinis, Savart?s wheel ? ?Baby Please Don?t Go?]

Narrator: I?m Catherine Girardeau in San Francisco.

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