Rattlebrained

The museum was packed with folks when we got there at around 17h00 to finish setting up and all and by 18h30 there was a line of people waiting for the workshops to begin.

At 18h45 we were swamped in the crowd…

I had inherited the Tonatem table, being a “specialist” of this instrument since I’ve made quite a few of them helping Bill on various projects these last years. He had surprised me earlier by telling us that he thought two participants at a time was enough, I had imagined more like 4 to 6 but it’s a fact that after considering the workspace and tools at disposition it seemed that three was probably a good number of instrument builders to begin with.
How it worked out for my colleagues at the other tables is anyone’s guess, the first ten minutes were shear pandemonium, crowded by the mass of folks trying to see the different going ons, it was almost impossible to move and so the next two hours just went by step by step, drill two holes, screw this piece there, choose a piece of styrofoam, watchout! that wire can be pretty nasty…

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In preparation for the “Night of the museums”, a yearly event when many European museums stay open on a specific Saturday evening until the early hours of dawn, I spent last Friday afternoon at the Musée d'Ethnologie de Neuchâtel with friends Bill, Thomas & Jacques preparing a make your own "La Sonorie" instrument workshop that was to take place the following day.
For this event the different museums rival in offering entertainment of all kinds, in our case we where sharing a space with a “make your own electronic instrument” workshop organized by the diy makaway group from Zurich.

Three instruments were to be proposed: Bongoboites, Pailleasax (see picture) & Tonatems

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Piezo mic, volume pot, guitar output jack, a bit of work and presto: electric washboard!

But why? you may ask. Because… why not? For fun? A spark of the old punk spirit? Perhaps. Last fall, friend Blaise gave me a piezo mic that he had soldered via some wire to an output jack. A fun thing to have around since you can stick it on to whatever you what with a piece of tape and see what sounds you can make. And it was to put on my washboard but till now, the nagging question: then…

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When Bone Dry Music received a whole new batch of whole sun-bleached ox rib bones== a couple of weeks ago I decided to completely ignored the fact that monetary resources are low and order a few, after all a choice of good rhythm bones will get you through hard times a lot better than uh, well, many other things I’m sure…

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About a year ago Dave bought a cheap Chinese resonator guitar and decided that it needed a better cone. So he ordered one but it was a bit too big for the guitar’s hole. Having taken a look at it I told him that I could make the hole bigger and so he brought it over to my workshop and we (I) ended up adding two sound holes, since he received two with the cone, remaking the bridge and sticking in a pickup between the cone and the neck.

After all that the guitar sounded definitely better, which was nice, but unfortunately has an annoying hum when amplified.

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Saturday we didn’t really learn how to build a theremine or at least while I was in the workshop nobody explained how it worked. In fact they were swamped and had far more folks than planned so it’s understandable and the workshop was already underway when we got there so perhaps something was said at the beginning.

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Bill and I spent a few days last month building the “musical instrument” pictured here. The idea is that the spoons bounce off the strings at different speeds since they are attached to rods of different lengths. You push down on the tennis balls, release them and the spoon just bounces off the string, like boing, boing, boing accelerating as the spoon bounces less high and ending up with a fast little bing, bing bing that turns into nothing as the sound dies out.

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