Ellen Fullman: 'Long String Instrument'

Raw Footage | 9 min | 1984

Like Bertoia and Eastley, Fullman started out as a sculptor, gradually got interested in constructing sound-making objects, and finally graduated to instrument invention. She has dedicated much of her artistic life to the Long String Instrument, a physically imposing device with 53-foot-long strings that takes several days to set up in a performance space. Later incarnations of the Long String Instrument expanded to 100 foot strings. Unlike Mr and Mrs Lasry with the Cristal Baschet, Fulman doesn’t use water to keep her fingers slippery but coats both her hands and the strings with rosin. Waxed up, she strokes the strings between her fingertips, coaxing out gorgeous hovering tones as extended as the filaments themselves. The timbre sometimes recalls the viola or the church organ but the notes are so stretched out it feels almost like a synthesizer sound. In one interview, Fullman described playing the Long String Instrument as “an ecstatic feeling, a floating sensation. Music is bigger than me: there are pitch relationships, shapes of notes beautiful beyond the level of human expression. I like that feeling of being a conduit.” This enjoyably amateurish local news item from an Austin, Texas TV station also showcases another of Fullman’s inventions, a water-drip drum.

- Simon Reynolds

Native American Instruments

Jarabi -Sona Jobarteh 

BBC News Africa | 5 mins

Sona Jobarteh hails from a long West African tradition of Griots and kora players; her grandfather was the master Griot Amadu Bansang Jobarteh. Creating her own history, she has broken from the male-dominated kora tradition to become the family's first female virtuoso of the instrument. Here Sona Jobarteh performs the traditional Malian song, Jarabi, accompanied by Femi Temowo on guitar and percussionist Robert Fordjour.

An Angklung Orchestra - Indonesia

Made by Film Australia 1975  | Directed by Brian Hannant | 6 mins

 An angklung is a Sundanese bamboo instrument which is rattled to produce a fixed note.  Originally tuned to the pentatonic scale, it was used in traditional music.  However, today it is usually tuned to the diatonic scale and Western style music is performed.  In this program the Bandung Conservatoire Orchestra demonstrates the complexity of the instrument and plays a well-known waltz.

Music from Bamboo, Music of Vietnam | The Bamboo Ensemble Suc Song Moi 

TEDx | 2017 | 12 mins

Listen to the beautiful sounds of Vietnam's only ensemble that performs its repertoire purely with bamboo music instruments.

1st song: Diễm Xưa | Trịnh Công Sơn
2nd song: Turkish March | Mozart

Suc Song Moi (The New Vitality) is the only bamboo ensemble in Vietnam that performs its symphonically orchestrated repertoire purely with bamboo music instruments. It was established in 2013 by the young conductor Dong Quang Vinh – the principle conductor of the Vietnam National Opera & Ballet & Hanoi Voices Choir, who had been trained for 9 years in Shanghai Conservatory of Music – China. The Ensemble’s music instruments were all made from bamboo by Artist Dong Van Minh (father of Dong Quang Vinh) – a prominent bamboo music maestro and its reperoire, includes Vietnamese folk music and world’s academic classical masterpieces by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saens, Offenbach, Elgar etc., were all orchestrated by Dong Quang Vinh himself. Inherited the passion for academic music from his father, combined with the unfettered mind of a young professional, Vinh set up the Bamboo Ensemble with an ambition to bring academic music closer to the young generation in his unique and original style.

This organ is completely made of paper and cardboard, except of one transparent plastic side to view internals. Build process described here: http://only-paper.ru/forum/38-22814-1 - a couple of sketches for the valves and key levers model are placed there I'm not going to make a templates for this model, at least in the nearest future , because it is too hard to just print and assemble a working thing - pretty much tuning should be made for each pipe, even paper thickness is matters

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/09/paper-organ/