Re: Scottish lithophone

Robert Walker wrote:

> Nice site!
>
> What a lot of work you've done instrument building, and the
> instruments look great!
>
>
> ttp://homepages.which.net/~alison.monteith3/Main%20Pages/instruments.html
>
> I like this entry:
>
> "
> A lithophone, hopefully to be installed on a (Scottish) hilltop.
> "
>
> Hope you do! Nice part of the world for it too - quiet rural area,
> and rolling hills high enough to be interesting to look at, but not
> too
> high and not that much frequented.
>
> Have you thought of including a few sound samples of the instruments -
> single
> notes or maybe a few notes in a melody or a few chords to
> give some idea of how they sound like when they are played?
>
> Robert
>

We're recording later this year and I hope to put up some excerpts.

As for the lithophone, there was a project a few months ago to encourage
artists to create pieces of environmental art to go on the top of some
of the summits of the Southern Upland Way, which is how I got the idea
for a lithophone. If I can get the funding I'll do it - stone is fairly
indestructible and appropriate I would say.

The question is - which tuning?

Kind Regards

Thanks, look forward to the excerpts to hear what they sound like.

I wonder - have a vague memory that in the early episodes of Scotland's music - which I heard
on tape - that they had recordings of musical boulders in scotland.

But perhaps not a musical scale.

I remember also reading - in Paris they have an extremely ancient pile of musical
boulders. Somewhere I came across a recording of it on the web, could look it up.

Wait a minute, good old Google - here it is:

http://www.rootsworld.com/rw/feature/vietnam.html

scroll down to the Dan Da - same tuning (it says) as a rock pile now in Paris.
6000 year old stone xylophone.

Robert