Sound Sculpture: Unusual stringed instruments

Sound Sculpture: A new project exploring homemade instruments with a group of musicians with learning disabilities. The Carousel House Band is an integrated group from Brighton consisting of learning disabled musicians and music facilitators. 

https://www.carousel.org.uk/carousel-house-band/

We explore creative music making through a variety of project work designed to give the group interesting and rewarding challenges and provide collaboration opportunities with the wider community. In this project we are looking at homemade instruments; exploring how they work and in what ways we can have fun playing them. In this session we looked at unusual stringed instruments for inspiration. The instrument in the picture is an electric zither with a moveable bridge. It is loosely based on the Japanese Koto / Chinese Guzheng and produces long sustained notes that can be altered by moving the bridge. Notes can be altered in pitch by applying downward pressure on the other side of the bridge to the side the strings being plucked. Traditional Japanese Koto music often features this sound. We also explores the indian Ektara (picture 2) it is a one stringed instrument with a small resonator chamber. The pitch of the string is altered by squeezing the two wooden sides of the instrument which are made of a pliable type of wood. The Carousel House band enjoyed improvising with these unsusual instruments and considering if the principles of the instruments might feature in our homemade instrument design