Question for Kraig Grady (or any other instrument builders)

Dear Kraig

I am a little while off from starting work on constructing a wooden
marimba. My question is about choice of wood for the bars. I read that
pernambuco and padouk are good resonant woods but I might find these
hard to come by in Scotland. What we do get is lots of Scandinavian
timber. Any recommendations or is it worth trying to find the Brazilian
woods? Thanks in anticipation.

Alison!
I don't know of any Scandinavian hardwoods that are good for
marimbas. Hence no Viking Marimbas. If you haven't made a marimba
before , i would start with Padouk as it is cheaper. Even though Partch
used pernambuco, I know one person who built a diamond and had trouble
with the the pitches bending out of tune. Why this happened to him and
not Partch, i do not know. Pernambuco is the choice wood for Violin bows
because it does bend. I know Marimbas have also been made out of
Mahogany. Remember all hardwoods are poisonous so you want a good mask.
a fan blowing away from you, and gloves. I got my first Padouk from Dan
Wolf ( Thank you forever DAN) after he got a splinter in his hand and it
swelled up. Not a common allergic reaction, but it does happen!

Alison Monteith wrote:

>
> Dear Kraig
>
> I am a little while off from starting work on constructing a wooden
> marimba. My question is about choice of wood for the bars. I read that
>
> pernambuco and padouk are good resonant woods but I might find these
> hard to come by in Scotland. What we do get is lots of Scandinavian
> timber. Any recommendations or is it worth trying to find the
> Brazilian
> woods? Thanks in anticipation.
>
>
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-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
http://www.anaphoria.com

The Wandering Medicine Show
Wed. 8-9 KXLU 88.9 fm

From: Alison Monteith
Subject: Question for Kraig Grady (or any
other instrument builders)

> I am a little while off from starting work on
> constructing a wooden marimba. My question is
> about choice of wood for the bars.
> I read that pernambuco and padouk are good
> resonant woods but I might find these hard
> to come by in Scotland.
> What we do get is lots of Scandinavian timber.
> Any recommendations or is it worth trying to
> find the Brazilian woods?

Hi Alison!

Many years ago, I went down to the specialty
lumber yard and bought some veneer sheets and
planks of Brazilian Rosewood to be used in
trimming and finishing a harpsichord I was making
from scratch. I got some extra rosewood to make a
marimba with. Not only did the rosewood have
marvelous sonic properties but for years after
sawing it, it exuded a fantastic intoxicating
aroma. Later I returned to the lumber yard to get
some more and was told that they no longer carried
it because it was nearly extinct and now protected
by international treaty. (I have not confirmed if
that is so -- it's just what they told me.) So, in
my ignorance I had the misfortune to contribute to
the annihilation of this beautiful wood. And to
what end? Since then I have been more cautious. So
many old hardwood forests have been razed that the
timber companies are now flattening South Pacific
islands, taking every tree, leaving the islands
permanently destroyed and uninhabitable. But the
islanders don't care -- they've all become
millionaires and can afford to relocate. Living on
a beautiful unspoilt island was a boring drag
anyway!

Now I think you should ultimately do what you
want, and that making musical instruments out of
rare wood with fabulous acoustical properties is
certainly more justifiable than using that same
wood to make disposable toothpicks and cheap
jewelry boxes.

But I see that you are from Scotland, the land of
proud self-reliance. I live in the Appalachian
foothills which resembles Scotland in some ways
and probably explains why so many people of Scotch
ancestry settled this familiar-looking rugged
land. These old-timers around here would rather
die than buy something they could make themselves,
which is practically a sin to them. The best
sounding banjars are made of maple taken from
trees they cut themselves, and stretched with the
hide of a groundhog or a cat. The most talented of
the locals play "every note in tune" cos those
banjars ain't got no frets.

My personal lifestyle choice at this stage of my
life is to maintain authenticity and live and
create in harmony with my environment. Thus, I
grow my own food, have my own fluoride & chlorine
free well water, milk my own goats for naturally
homogenized steroid-free milk, and eat brown and
green eggs laid by my free-ranging chickens. Also,
I don't eat fresh strawberries in the dead of the
winter, trying to maintain harmony with the
rhythms of the seasons. I also build my own
fences, write my own music, create my own scales,
develop my own tuning software and 3D audio
algorithms and even on occasion design my own
Digital Synthesis Engine ASICs.

I keep the heat low in winter and use fans rather
than air-conditioners in the summer. Yes, perhaps
some part of me would enjoy going to the opera and
sipping cappuccino at a sidewalk cafe in San Jose.
But that would be a denial of the spirits of my
ancestors and the potentiality of my descendants.

I believe that I am creating authenticity to my
culture (as well as being descended through my
mother from the hyper-self-reliant Thomas
Jefferson and his Nubian mistress Sally Hemings, I
am Kiowa Indian through my father) through these
actions and that by doing so I am choosing
resonation rather than resistance with my life
path.

So, the next time I make a marimba, I am going to
try using cherry wood from prunings in my cherry
orchard -- and if that doesn't give the sound I am
looking for, I will try one of the cedars or
pines. What I am saying is that. yes you _can_
make a wonderful instrument from a beautiful tree
cut down literally on the other side of the
planet. You can travel 100 miles per hour in your
car and you can eat fresh strawberries imported
from New Zealand or Brazil on the coldest day of
the year. But that is not the only choice. An
instrument made not only by your own hand but from
materials from your own environment will sound
beyond its resonator and move in unison with your
spirit.

As a final thought, I leave you with the words of
Bart Hopkins:

"The most highly prized xylophones are made with
dense tropical hardwoods. For this plan I have
suggested making the bars of redwood, simply
because it is one of the better-sounding among
widely available and affordable temperate woods.
It also is easy to work and not prone to
splitting; it looks nice and ages well. You may
choose to use some other wood, and perhaps you
will come across one with a truly superior tone.
If you do use another wood, your bar lengths for
given pitches may be well out of agreement with
the approximate lengths given in Figure 2.
Whatever you use, be sure that your wood is
kiln-dried or otherwise well-seasoned. Look for
straight, close grain, particularly on the broad
face of the bar, and avoid knotty wood, or discard
knotty sections when making the bars." - Bart
Hopkins, "Making Simple Musical Instruments"
(1995, Lark Books, Asheville)

- Jeff

--- In tuning@y..., Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@a...> wrote:
> Alison!
> I don't know of any Scandinavian hardwoods that are good for
> marimbas. Hence no Viking Marimbas. If you haven't made a marimba
> before , i would start with Padouk as it is cheaper. Even though
Partch
> used pernambuco, I know one person who built a diamond and had
trouble
> with the the pitches bending out of tune. Why this happened to him
and
> not Partch, i do not know.

Kraig,

Do you know if Partch might have used lacquers (perhaps Jon Szanto
could reply to this as well)? Do you? Or do you use bare wood?

I wonder if this would prevent the absorbtion of moisture, which
might otherwise change the pitch relative to humidity conditions.

Thanks,

Jacky Ligon

--- In tuning@y..., ligonj@n... wrote:

Well, first Kraig mentioned:

> I know one person who built a diamond and had
> trouble with the the pitches bending out of tune.
> Why this happened to him and not Partch, i do not know.

Kraig, actually the diamond marimba did go out of tune over the
years, and I believe we retuned it before the performances in Europe
in 1980.

Then Jacky:

> Do you know if Partch might have used lacquers (perhaps Jon Szanto
> could reply to this as well)? Do you? Or do you use bare wood?
> I wonder if this would prevent the absorbtion of moisture, which
> might otherwise change the pitch relative to humidity conditions.

Yes. The bars of the Diamond Marimba, Bass Marimba, Marimba Eroica
and Quadrangularis Reversum all has a finish coat of some kind. I
will contact Danlee Mitchell to see if he remembers the exact
forumla/substance, but knowing Partch's funding, it may certainly
have varied over the years, according to what he could get his hands
on.

For a lot of good general purpose info on bar making, "Genesis of a
Music" does include a lot, so this may be of help to Allison. Also,
if one were to make *low* range wooden bar instruments, I can say
authoritatively (from playing on the Bass Marimba for years) that the
softer woods work well in those situations, not having to absorb
blows from small, hard mallets. But for normal, mid- to high-range
mariimbas, a harder impact/vibrating material is essential. Difficult
in these days of resource depletion.

(and to think: Scotland, the island deforested those many centuries
ago. Maybe Allison can let us in on some of the recent efforts to re-
forest some of the areas of one of my favorite places on Earth!)

Also, John Schneider, whose is part of MicroFest and will be putting
on a Partch Centennial at UCLA on May 26, has recently had a new
Diamond Marimba built for him (I believe it was two *different*
people that worked on the project), and he may have information on
the above matters.

Cheers,
Jon

J Scott wrote:

> But the
> islanders don't care -- they've all become
> millionaires and can afford to relocate. Living on
> a beautiful unspoilt island was a boring drag
> anyway!

I believe only one or two individuals become rich and those that
relocate do so out of the inability to live of the resources of the
land.

>
> The best
> sounding banjars are made of maple taken from
> trees they cut themselves, and stretched with the
> hide of a groundhog or a cat. The most talented of
> the locals play "every note in tune" cos those
> banjars ain't got no frets.

Have you notice much use of the neutral third in that area? I have
gotten more than one oral reference to this.

> My personal lifestyle choice at this stage of my
> life is to maintain authenticity and live and
> create in harmony with my environment. Thus, I
> grow my own food, have my own fluoride & chlorine
> free well water, milk my own goats for naturally
> homogenized steroid-free milk, and eat brown and
> green eggs laid by my free-ranging chickens. Also,
> I don't eat fresh strawberries in the dead of the
> winter, trying to maintain harmony with the
> rhythms of the seasons. I also build my own
> fences, write my own music, create my own scales,
> develop my own tuning software and 3D audio
> algorithms and even on occasion design my own
> Digital Synthesis Engine ASICs.

GO BRO!

> I believe that I am creating authenticity to my
> culture (as well as being descended through my
> mother from the hyper-self-reliant Thomas
> Jefferson and his Nubian mistress Sally Hemings, I
> am Kiowa Indian through my father) through these
> actions and that by doing so I am choosing
> resonation rather than resistance with my life
> path.

Ojibwe/Chippewa and the James (as in Frank and Jesse) Brothers here!

>

> So, the next time I make a marimba, I am going to
> try using cherry wood from prunings in my cherry
> orchard -- and if that doesn't give the sound I am
> looking for, I will try one of the cedars or
> pines.

The Cherry is excellent for flutes, as in most fruit woods, but not good
for bars.
The recycling of old furniture is a good resource of some hardwoods
before they just end up in the trash!

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
http://www.anaphoria.com

The Wandering Medicine Show
Wed. 8-9 KXLU 88.9 fm

--- In tuning@y..., Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@a...> wrote:

> > I believe that I am creating authenticity to my
> > culture (as well as being descended through my
> > mother from the hyper-self-reliant Thomas
> > Jefferson and his Nubian mistress Sally Hemings, I
> > am Kiowa Indian through my father) through these
> > actions and that by doing so I am choosing
> > resonation rather than resistance with my life
> > path.
>
> Ojibwe/Chippewa and the James (as in Frank and Jesse) Brothers here!

Scotch Irish and Cherokee here. The brothers abound!

JL

Hi, Alison;

I think the preference for the South American species lies in part with
their low internal damping. They're also quite dense, certainly
attractive and rather expensive (a bit of conjecture: they might be more
uniform in tensile properties and grain orientation because of their
density). Brazilian Rosewood hasn't been imported legally to the States
since 1991.

I don't make percussion instruments, though I imagine any wood with
reasonably low damping could make a fine marimba. I prefer using
domestic wood species that don't see much commercial use, but I recycle
a lot of stuff, too (hi, Kraig!) - here are some ideas. Boxwood and
Lilac are nearly as dense as the SA species, but they tend to be small
and are difficult to season; Beech and denser Hornbeam and Dogwood might
be nice if a little unstable with humidity. Old North American Red Birch
is great stuff, but Yellow and Baltic stuff seems spongier. Sycamore
Maple...Apple, Cherry, Pear...Oak...I don't know anything about Oak.
What about Scotch Pine? The examples I've seen have been as hard as the
American Yellow Pines get. I gather it isn't harvested much anymore like
most UK woods but maybe you can find some smaller old pieces.

You might try checking out the Musical Instrument Makers Forum at
<http://www.mimf.com/>

Clark

Absolutely millions of thanks for the advice and insights Kraig and
y'all. You are quite right about the environment Jeff. (I imagine
someone hunched over his methane - powered email machine). I was more
than a little concerned about the environmental implications of using
some of the exotic woods, and the holistic ideals of using what you have
around and within resonate deeply with my own ideals (pun intended). I
reckon also that playing music inspired by the landscape and culture
around you on an instrument made as far as possible with local materials
could add spiritual depth to performances, certainly in terms of
audience interest.

Jon asked about reforestation in Scotland. Yes, the Caledonian Forest
has been on the agenda for some years now and great efforts are under
way to reforest large areas of the West and the Borders where I now
live. As regards music, a fiddle maker, or should I say violin maker
from the North East has been receiving rave reviews for his instruments,
some of which are being hailed as qualitatively up there with the
Strads. I'd like to check if he uses Scottish timber.

As for links between Celtic music and other ethnic musics, the Hebridean
waulking songs (songs sung in the past by women as they treated their
woven cloth with sheep urine by the way) are virtually indistinguishable
from some North American and Far Eastern tribal chants and would be a
fertile field for microtonal study. These ladies did not sing in 12 tet.
And Scottish fiddlers can get radically microtonal - especially after a
few drams of uisce - another unexplored field of serious study (the
fiddling rather than the drinking).

Thanks again for the replies to my request.

John Szanto wrote:

>Also, John Schneider, whose is part of MicroFest and will be putting
>on a Partch Centennial at UCLA on May 26, has recently had a new
>Diamond Marimba built for him (I believe it was two *different*
>people that worked on the project), and he may have information on
>the above matters.

John Schneider will be performing the same concert at the MicroFest
conference on Friday night, April 6. The program will include Barstow, the
Letter, some Li Po songs, selections from Bitter Music, Psalm 29, San
Francisco, Two Studies on Ancient Greek Scales, December 1942, 3
Intrusions, and other things. The Diamond Marimba will be used in the 3
Intrusions.

The person I know of who built the Diamond Marimba was Bill Slye
(bsly@mail.cruzio.com). I believe he did most of the work at Lou Harrison's
place in Aptos (perhaps in Bill Colvig's workshop?). Bill Slye has built
his own JI marimba as part of a thesis at UC Santa Cruz, and it was played
at MicroFest last year. When building it, he went to great lengths to tune
the partials of each individual bar to JI (i.e. harmonics) insofaras is
possible. I'm pretty sure he did the same with the diamond marimba.

Bill has told me that he considers the tuning of partials crucial and, like
William Sethares, was implicitly critical of the point of view voiced by
Kraig here and followed by myself and Lou that JI on idiophones can be
effective even with non-harmonic partials, especially when "helmholtz"
resonators are used. In any case, I greatly respect Bill's craftsmanship
and composing, I'm sure that he would be a great resource to anyone
considering the construction of a marimba. I'm hoping that he will make it
down for the MicroFest conference.

By the way, the preliminary schedule and other information about the
MicroFest 2001 conference is available at:
http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/microfest2001.html. Please check back for
periodic updates. Please note that, if you plan to attend the conference
dinner (I hope so!) please send your check for $20 by March 15. Also, if
you would like a poster with MicroFest information, please send me your
snailmail address.

Bill

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^
^ Harvey Mudd College URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^
^ 301 E. Twelfth St. (909)607-4170 (office) ^
^ Claremont CA 91711 USA (909)607-7600 (fax) ^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

--- In tuning@y..., Bill Alves <ALVES@O...> wrote:
> John Schneider will be performing the same concert at the MicroFest
> conference on Friday night, April 6. The program will include
Barstow

...etc. Bill, thank you for the update on the concert rep -- I've
been waiting for word of this from John Schneider himself. If you see
him in the near future, box his ears for me, huh?!

Excellent info about the D. Marimba, too. Though:

> Bill has told me that he considers the tuning of partials crucial
and, like
> William Sethares, was implicitly critical of the point of view
voiced by
> Kraig here and followed by myself and Lou that JI on idiophones can
be
> effective even with non-harmonic partials, especially
when "helmholtz"
> resonators are used.

Well, wouldn't ones views on this be directly contingent upon how you
planned on using said instruments, how you would compose, etc.?

In any event, since you've got a full-on Partch concert happening,
you've also now got free publicity on the next update of Corporeal
Meadows!

Cheers,
Jon

--- In tuning@y..., JSZANTO@A... wrote:
> > Bill has told me that he considers the tuning of partials crucial
> and, like
> > William Sethares, was implicitly critical of the point of view
> voiced by
> > Kraig here and followed by myself and Lou that JI on idiophones
can
> be
> > effective even with non-harmonic partials, especially
> when "helmholtz"
> > resonators are used.
>
> Well, wouldn't ones views on this be directly contingent upon how
you
> planned on using said instruments, how you would compose, etc.?

I think you are correct here Jon!

If one wishes to hear (and compose with) inharmonic timbres as they
might a chord (especially where gongs are concerned), then timbre
scales may be paramount. But where one wishes to tune by the
fundamentals (as in the case of resonator instruments), for many also
valid musical reasons, then JI may provide the answer. I've actually
composed much more music with my inharmoninc timbres in JI, than that
derived from spectra of the instruments. But I wish to have command
over both languages, and both are beautiful and musically useful to
me.

Quite a large number of my acoustic samples are of instruments which
do not necessarily have helmholtz resonators.

Certainly style and tastes tailored to the immediate musical needs of
the moment come into play when we make our choices.

Ah, the bliss of musical freedom!

Jacky Ligon