Vote for Your Favorite Garden Instrument!
The Garden Instrument Contest is now over and all of the entries are in. Please read through the submissions below, pick your favorite instrument, and vote!
Entry #1: Ranjit’s “Trumpet Marine”
I wanted to do a sound sculpture for the Figment Festival, which is held on Governors Island, a former military base in New York City’s harbor which is in the process of being converted to a national park. I’ve always wanted to do a piece that works with water (remind me to tell you about Voice of the River sometime), so I decided I would make a bunch of horns attached to the waterfront railing that would be played by the pressure of waves going up and down in pipes that extended down to water level.
Long after my proposal was accepted, but only two weeks before the festival, I found out that the Park Service didn’t want anyone messing with the water. So I had to make a quick change of plans. After a bunch of brainstorming and hair-tearing, I came up with a windmill-powered hurdy-gurdy. Well, my gurdying-experiments failed- I couldn’t get much of a tone out of my rosined disc- so I changed to little metal plectrums and had a wind-powered banjo. (I still want to return to the hurdy-gurdy idea someday!) My lack of experience with even the simplest carpentry was an obstacle, but I muddled through.
I originally named the project Trumpet Marine because it was going to be made up of water-powered horns, but it was also an homage to the stringed instrument known as the Trumpet Marine (or Tromba Marina), which I’ve been a bit obsessed with since I saw one in the Musical Instruments Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (I made a sort of hobo Tromba Marina as one of my 29 Instruments in 29 Days. So when I had to change my plans and make a stringed instrument of my own instead of a horn, it pleased me to keep the Trumpet Marine name.
I used a drumhead as the soundboard for the “banjo”, but it’s not ideal. Knowing nothing about drums, I didn’t know until I bought a drum head that they’re not under tension until you attach them to a
drum. I should have been able to guess that. I want to replace the drumhead with a much tighter membrane, or with a resonant box, because the piece isn’t currently as loud as I like. Though perhaps its soft voice is good for a garden instrument.
As a side note, I learned when researching hurdy-gurdy technology that they use a similar sort of off-balance buzzing bridge to that used in the real trumpet marine. I didn’t know that before!
OK, enough chattering!
Ranjit Bhatnagar
Entry #2: Abram and Pop’s “Three Guitars and a Bucket”
So as not to bore you, I will only give the basic details. A few years ago, my Pop showed me a website online that featured wind harps for sale. The years that followed, we poured over the internet for information detailing the theory and construction of our own wind harp. Finally, in October of 2007, I took a week off and went to Pop’s house for a visit, and to build the harp. Using pictures we had found, and some shade tree engineering, we built, what he calls, “Three Guitars and a Bucket.”
The tuning is in the key of E flat, and in a nice breeze, it sings a very beautiful, haunting song.
Hope you like it, enjoy the pictures.
Abram Pierce
Entry #3: Greg’s “Cracked Cymbal”
Here is a pic of a cracked cymbal that I rehammered and mounted in my garden. Rain sounds nice. I wish I had been in the garden earlier when the 5.4 earthquake rolled through. Might have sounded cool.
Entry #4: Gerard’s “Cat’s Cradle”
3 piano boards/harps were installed at Les Jardins de Metis in Quebec. Strings are strung across a piano soundboard and fed to trees. When the wind blows it becomes an aeolian harp. Strings attached to poplars get pulled and go Twang with a pitch bend. People pluck them, rain falls on them and branches hit them. The installation is called Cat’s Cradle and is by Gerard Leckey with Juliette Patterson as the landscape architect.
Gerard Leckey
Vote!
Who should win the Garden Instrument Contest?
- Abram and Pop with “Three Guitars and a Bucket” (51%, 112 Votes)
- Gerard with “Cat’s Cradle” (38%, 82 Votes)
- Ranjit with “Trumpet Marine” (8%, 17 Votes)
- Greg with “Cracked Cymbal” (3%, 7 Votes)
Total Voters: 218
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Well, that’s it. This is the first contest on Oddstrument and I’m very happy with how it’s turned out so far. Thanks to all who have participated - I can now cross off one of my “things to do in life” (to host a contest). I think we should have another contest, but what shall it be about this time? (comments appreciated)
I would love to hear these!
Me too Alex. Hopefully soon, Oddstrument will have the ability to record some of these.
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