Percussion ensemble

Last night was the first night of the semester for the Percussion Ensemble class taught by Brett Reed. I decided to enroll in the class because I want to be able to understand more about traditional and non traditional percussion music and musical instruments as I know I will be continuing to explore the sound aspects of the ceramics I make in the future.
There are eight students in the class. There is a wide range of experience ranging from a couple of guys who were in their high school marching and concert bands as drummers, one guy who has been playing a drum set for seven years, and four others who have little or no experience directly in drumming, but, like myself have an interest in learning more. It seems like the perfect kind of group for me to fit into.
Brett explained that we will learn how to play several pieces of music, some traditional and some experimental. He even said he will provide scores that the class can perform on my pieces now on display at the reception on September 19! I am very excited at the prospect.
Brett suggested reading Steve Schick's book: "The Percussionist's Art", which is in our library.

A guitarist's perspective

Yesterday, I took Matt Gould, guitarist and faculty at PVCC through my show. He gave me some great feedback, very positive, and some great suggestions on how I might improve the acoustic qualities of some of my pieces.

For instance, this piece is one of four in the show with guitar strings as the main sound producing factor of the pieces. They are to be either plucked, strummed or struck with a stick to produce sounds similar to the hammer dulcimer, guitar, or koto. Matt helped me choose the various strings used for these pieces at AZ Music Co.
He pointed out that the bridge on a stringed instrument needs to be of a height and proximity to the attachment point of the strings so as to produce an extreme angle of the string downward to the attachment point. My bridges need to be raised higher and moved closer to the ends of the strings.
Also, he noted that the sound could be improved if there was a chamber seperate from the area the strings traverse, like on a guitar, violin, etc. The strings go across the body and their vibrations are magnified by the hollow, enclosed space underneath the strings.
He also suggested I make bridges that are arched, so a bow could be drawn across the strings individually as another option for playing them.
Since the show has been in place I have given many individuals and groups tours of the show showing how each piece is manipulated and explaining the concept behind each one. The response has been most gratifying and made all the work and anxiety worthwhile. The majority of pieces in the show came together at the very last minute as they required much assembly and the fabrication of metal support structures before I could determine any sound result. Fortunately, the majority of pieces are successful in my mind as far as how the sound generated is coupled with the visual and physical form.

Feedback from a peer

Friday I took my friend, colleague and respected musician, Dr. Brett Reed through my exhibit at PVCC and got some very valuable feedback on the work. I was excited to do this because he was a big factor in my pursuing this direction early on. He shared with me many examples of non traditional musical instruments, and instruments made from found objects, and instruments made by artists. This helped me tremendously. Brett also gave me lots of information on key factors in musical instrument design, such as paying attention to the points of attachment being close to node points of the vibration of the material so as to not inhibit the vibration.

Here are some of the observations Brett made about certain pieces in the show:

Watermelon Fly Trap-Thickest strings need to be longer in order to have room to vibrate. Try removing bridge for thicker strings, or creating seperate bridge for thicker strings, or just use thinner strings for more sound as is. For nails, try using differing sizes to make variations in pitch.

Seed Stalk Trio-Try wrapping foam around metal support in order to allow clay tube to vibrate freely. Also, manipulate metal leaves for sound variations by making some thicker.

Chrysanthemum Garden-Larger bowls sound best.

For all with nails fired in place, try differing sizes to vary pitch, or make nails insertable after firing to not have to worry about firing melting nails.

Decide where to draw the line between making artistic objects and musical instruments.

The last comment is very important. I want to make objects that use sound as another aspect of the piece, not the reason for the piece to exist. This means I won't make my own versions of guitars, drums, horns, etc. I will try to make, as I have tried in this show, to make objects which are expressive artistically as forms of communication through sight, touch and sound. I haven't gotten to the point of consideration of their taste or smell at this point, but you never know.

What the title means

The title for this exhibition came from the title of the Oliver Sacks book: Musicophilia. The book is a collection of essays by Sacks about his observations over his professional and personal lifetime of how mysterious and powerfully our human brains are affected by music. I was very moved by the case histories of people who, after suffering a brain injury or neurological affliction, either lose some musical ability, or gain some ability they never had prior.

Faced with the task of creating a new body of work to fill an exhibition slot in the college's gallery schedule, I had been toying with the idea of making my own ceramic musical instruments, but didn't have any firm concept beyond the ones I had seen in 2004 in China made of porcelain.

It came to me in a moment that possibly I could make ceramic objects which would make sounds when moved, were struck with the hand, or other material, etc. The sound would happen when interacted with by humans, thus completing the connection between our brains' affinity for music (Musicophilia), and the ceramic form.

I researched traditional musical instruments, and found books on making musical instruments and discovered a huge range of forms and types I had never heard of before.

I discovered there are four types of musical instruments: idiophones(which make sounds through the vibration of their body), membranophones(which produce sounds when struck), chordophones(stringed instruments), and aerophones (wind instruments).

I knew that I would be unable to learn how to make traditional forms of intruments without years of study and trial and error, so I decided to attempt to make objects that make differing sounds in the same way as traditional objects but in different forms. I chose to use ceramic as the main component material because I have over 30 years of experience with it and understand its varying tonal qualitites better than any other material at my disposal.

Setting up

Today I loaded up my truck and began the process of setting up the show in the gallery at Paradise Valley Community College. My colleague, and gallery director, Adria Pecora, helped me unpack and set up the first pieces.
The first task of arranging an exhibit is to bring the sculpture stands out of storage and put them together. We set them around the space not too concerned with exact placement yet. Ben Esh, PVCC Center for Performing Arts Box office manager, let me know about upcoming events that will be using the lobby/gallery space over the coming days. This space is problematic because it tries to combine the two functions of being a lobby for the events held in the theater, and as a display space for periodic art shows, such as mine. The problems are when theatrical performances have full houses and the lobby is elbow to elbow during intermissions. There is no room for pedestals clogging up the floor space at those times, so the gallery schedule is formulated around suspected full houses, with varying degrees of success.
After setting up the 13 pedestals, we began unpacking the works I'd brought and just setting them on pedestals. Again, concern at this point is not for exact placement of every piece. This will be done when all the work is in the space and can be evaluated for how they relate to each other and to the space itself.

Photo shoot

It's been a tremendously busy 3 days preparing for my show. Tomorrow I begin to set up the gallery with my pieces, so today and yesterday were devoted to photographing the work. Photo documentation of artwork is necessary and important because it serves as a means to share the work with a broad audience, and it serves as an alternate way of depicting the concepts explored in the work. By working with the photographer, the artist is able to highlight the aspects of the work that are the core meaning of the work. This is especially important in dealing with three dimensional artwork where some views may not be as interesting or evocative as others.

Mike Healy is a good friend and long time professional photographer. He is a meticulous craftsman of the camera and light. This weekend he brought an entire photo studio to my house and turned the front room into a working studio complete with backdrops, lights, diffusers and reflectors. The images he created raw in the camera looked fantastic. I can't wait until he digitally processes the images and selects the best views of each piece.

I was frantically working to complete as many pieces as possible for Mike to shoot and managed to finish 13 pieces. This is the first show since my graduate school days, when the work was not complete when it came out of the kiln. For this show, I had to do a lot of metal work(torch cutting, arc welding) to complete the presentation and to bring the concept to fruition. Remember the concept of this show is that each piece's form creates a particular sound when struck, plucked or moved.

I just finished applying underglaze to three last pieces and put them into the kiln for firing. I think I'm ready.

sketches

Here are some sketches I made to help plan out some of the pieces for my show. Some were inspired by photos by Karl Blossfeldt and others were inspired by pure whimsy.

The above was inspired by Soleri bells, and my vision of the human figure in everything.

The image above on the left was inspired by a seed pod in one of Karl Blossfeldt's photos, the right image is of a chicken(inspired by one of the four in our backyard). The head is separate from the body and creates a whistle sound when you move the head up and down. This might not make it into the show as the whistle mechanism needs some work.

Below on the left is an image of a fish with guitar strings strung from beneath the head, over the body down to the tail.

On the right below are some drum ideas.

Karl Blossfeldt photos

I planted a big garden in the backyard this summer and spent a lot of time looking at the plants and marvelling in their forms and structure. At some point I began to wonder at the similarities between music, with its structure and form and plants. I thought of the plants as forms of energy, and wondering what kind of sound they would make if they were sound energy instead of biomass energy. I took lots of photos of different plants to study further but was not satisfied. I remembered a book of photos by Karl Blossfeldt on my bookshelf. Blossfeldt was a German sculpture professor who photographed plant forms with a home made camera. His photos have influenced many generations of artists since their publication in 1928.

Blossfeldt's images presented me with ideas for forms from which a sound could be generated solely as a result of the structure of the object.

Here is an image of one of the works in progress:

More inspirations

As the summer began and I devoted my energies towards making work for the exhibit: Musiciphilia, I realized I wanted to create something more than ceramic versions of existing musical instruments, but I didn't know where or how to begin.

I started by looking at the wikipedia page for percussion instruments. This is a great overview of percussion instruments around the world, many I had never heard of. I spent hours investigating each of those, such as the bock-a-da-bock, the cuica, the lion's roar, singing bowls, etc. Check it out for yourself here.

Inspirations

The original inspiration for this body of work came about on a tour of a porcelain history museum in Jingdezhen, China in the summer of 2004. Our tour group was treated to a performance of various Chinese folk songs performed by a group of young Chinese girls on all porcelain instruments: gongs, chimes, drums, and some that defied description. That performance opened my eyes to the range of sounds possible from ceramic materials, and I began to think about making my own at some point.

Next was seeing some ceramic drums called Udus that made a range of interesting sounds when slapped with the palm. This enticed me to try making my own, with various amounts of success.

The thing that really put it all in motion was the opportunity to have an exhibition at the college where I teach. I decided at that point to devote my energy over the summer to creating a new body of work that would stimulate the eye through the visual form, stimulate the hand through variations of the texture, and stimulate the ear through variations in the sounds made by the pieces.

A big inspiration early on in the process was reading the book by Oliver Sacks titled Musiciphilia. This was a real eye opener for me to the power that sound has on our brains and bodies. His book traces his own development of the thesis that sounds in general, and music in particular cause very unusual and fascinating responses in our brains. As a doctor, Sacks has encountered many cases himself where a person afflicted with some neurological disorder such as Parkinsons, shows remarkable changes in their symptoms, improvements in their emotional responses, improvements in their ability to control their bodies, simply by listening to music. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

I had several discussions with my colleagues at PVCC about this topic that helped me a lot. Dr. Brett Reed is a musician as well as music faculty who gave me encouragement and direction. Dr. Christopher Scinto is also and accomplished musician, faculty and division chair of the Fine & Performing Arts at PVCC. He also provided encouragement and direction.

Among other things, Drs. Reed and Scinto mentioned Harry Partch as one I should look up. He was a musician, composer and instrument builder through the mid- late 20th century who rebelled against the traditional tuning used by western musicians as too limiting, and developed alternative tunings that filled in the spaces between notes with "microtunings". This allowed Partch and his followers to create music that more exactly coincided with the sounds in human speech than traditional tuning allowed. Here is a link to more information on Harry Partch. And here is a link to a Youtube video of Partch performing his compositions on instruments he designed and built.

Last year, I purchased a book by Barry Hall, titled "From Mud to Music" that was a valuable resource through this journey. This book focuses on ceramic musical instruments from around the world.

Clarification

This is the first post of my new blog about my upcoming exhibition at Paradise Valley Community College titled: Musiciphila: Sight, Shape, Sound. The exhibit will be in the lobby/gallery of the Center for Performing Arts on the 32nd St and Union Hills campus in north Phoenix.

All the work in the show will be ceramic made since June. The unifying factor in all the work in the show is that they are designed to make sound. Some pieces will require tapping with a bamboo stick, or with the hands, others will make sounds when moved, or shaken, and some will sound when plucked or strummed.

Instead of the usual signs in an art show saying: "Do not touch!", viewers will be encouraged to interact with the pieces to make sound. The dates of the show are August 20-September 21, 2009. On Saturday, September 19 at 5:30pm, there will be a closing reception during which time all are encouraged to join together for a big jam session when all the pieces will be manipulated at the same time. All are invited to attend. There will be a jazz concert in the theater starting at 7pm following the reception.