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Projects
I like to work on things, with my hands and with my mind. Since 2000 I have been an amateur woodworker, and since we moved in to our house in 2002 I have been doing a good deal of carpentry as well. Also, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about computer programming, and occasionally do some human-directed writing and translation.
The tin-can cello had its first time up on stage last night, when I took it to Brooklyn Raga Massive's weekly concert and open jam at Jalopy in Red Hook.
The concert was an album release party for cellist George Crotty. Great, I'm looking forward to hearing more of his music. The open jam was all I'd been hoping for -- I've been meaning to get to this weekly happening for a long time. Definitely going back.
The tin-can cello had a strong wolf tone when playing B, especially noticeable on the A string. Last night I fixed it with an improvised wolf tone eliminator:
My thinking was that the wolf tone eliminators I've seen for sale are just a method of adding a little mass and damping to the afterlength of the string. I thought a fishing weight would do nicely and not have any moving parts to come loose. It works like a charm -- the B on the A string sounds clear and true, and it sounds fine on other strings as well though there is not as much of a stark difference... I don't hear wolf tone anywhere else.
posted morning of December 28th, 2018: Respond ➳ More posts about Luthery
A dilruba could be built with a gourd body. (note Not nearly enough tension to support a washtub construction, though.) The neck might be cherry -- the shape of it seems pretty easy to build, much much simpler than a sitar neck. (I am thinking here that the neck is not hollow, I'll need to check that.) Friction pegs for the tarif strings could easily be let in to the side of the neck with the string winding on the outside. The bridge will be maple and the nut cocobolo. Or a cocobolo bridge even! That could be made pretty thin.
Over the course of building the tin-can cello, I've searched around a few times for precursors [1, 2]. I've been a bit surprised at how few examples of an instrument with a metal soundboard I've been able to find! Here are some projects I've had in mind recently:
The tin-can cello. This is the project most of my blogging has been about recently, a cello with a washtub body, with the base of the tub as soundboard.
A 4-stringed viola da gamba sort of instrument with a wok (bronze) as its soundboard and an arched maple back, and steel strings. I'm not really sure yet of what the scale length will be or what gauge of strings I'll be using. I'm thinking the strings will be tuned to E, A, D, G but I don't know in what octave.
A banjo-style instrument with a cymbal as its soundboard.
A violin made from pounded-out sheet metal (with a wooden neck/scroll/fingerboard). If bronze can be found in sheet form and is strong enough, I'd like to use it. Otherwise steel. [Looks like sheet bronze, brass, and steel can be had from onlinemetals.com]
A (high-tin) bronze urn or vase or bowl (singing bowl?) or bucket, fitted with a wooden neck and bridge, and strings.
An erhu with a coffee can resonator.
A violin (or soprano violin?) with a cookie tin resonator.
A contrabass with a bell as its resonating chamber.
