Our next workshop will be “Making Whistling Bottles” on February 9, 2013; this workshop will be for more experienced ceramicists. Please check back for details, email me to be added to my mailing list at soundswork@gmail.com, or add your email address to our Reply comments below.
- Categories:
Pre-Hispanic Flutes, SoundsWork Flutes, Workshops
Wales is dense with history and beauty. On a rainy day a few weeks ago, I visited Caenarfon Castle, built about 1300 AD, with layers of walls to walk on, polygonal towers, and a central green, with a wall for the town.
Caenarfon Castle
Wandering around, I had no desire to live there, nor to live in its purview. How cold and drafty it must have been. And boys then must have loved it, and still do.
The castle is astounding: huge, dense walls of local stones, walls within walls, arrow slots to the outside, defenses within defenses, a puzzle in space, and passage ways that go up the towers, to the top of the walls, and from one corridor to another. 
They don’t all connect, and you must return up or down winding staircases, around and around, back through halls to where you started.
I don’t think this castle would be considered safe for Disneyland. Certainly it lacks disabled access.
From the Castle to the Menai Straits at low tide
Caenarfon from the Castle
- Categories:
UK & Wales travel
Cemaes Bay is beautiful & I’m enjoying myself; it’s a rugged coastline with tide pools, ochre lichen, spring green grasses & lots & lots of flowers.
There’s also a nuclear power plant on the coastline, with nature walks all around. It’s the same age as the Japanese plant; its birthday party was postponed after the earthquake, Tsunami and meltdown. Passing by on the nature path, I was filled with the humming of electric cables,
and the coconut smells of yellow gorse. The musty white smell of hawthorne reminds me of childhood springs.
The nature path leads to a 360 degree vista of the power plant and the headlands. Whoever planned this path was proud of it, and the landmark is visible for miles.
It’s time for the next generation of nuclear power plant. Land in the vicinity has been purchased & more homes boarded up all around.
This lichen is everywhere visible on the rocks.
- Categories:
UK & Wales travel
Adje & I worked every night during our research week until about 11pm before stopping to eat at the Royal Tandori, the only restaurant still open. On Monday, April 25, he returned to Germany. I’m finally finished labeling the hundreds of pictures and sound files; yet to do is tweaking the photos, entering the measurements into their table, and a rough edit of the sound files. Eventually we will combine all our images and sound files.
Now I’m happily more rested and going back & forth to fondle my favorite pipes. Yet again, these flutes are my teachers. Each has an extraordinary feature. One has several ripples of clay built up around the aperture, causing an amazing vibrato/rough tone that can be varied with air pressure. Another has a breathy tone with an undertow of subtle little tones that can again be accented with variations in breath pressure. What fun to play! Most of these pipes have been broken and reconstructed; while the timbre remains, whatever tunings that were present have been lost.
This small single pipe has a small nick in the upper edge of the air duct that may promote the second partial in play.
Another remarkable double pipe has been broken and repaired but not reconstructed. It has enough unisons, wonderful intervals, and combination tones that its tuning cannot be just by chance.
Yesterday, in Bangor, I recorded a few more single pipes; two more to go. I love their sounds: their odd alterations to the mouthpiece seem to create the ability to really use the ‘wolf’ tones, to create beats, to burble & to howl. Some of these alterations are clearly intentional; others cannot be so definitely stated.
Tiny rolls of clay have been added around the apertures of the mouthpiece in this double pipe. It’s visible on the right pipe but less so on the left; that pipe has an additional roll of clay over part of the aperture. Unfortunately, this double pipe does not play, probably because there are glued cracks in the tubes that leak.
In Cemaes Bay, I am now working in the clay studio of Fiona Brown; she makes a lovely production line of small glazed horses, sheep, pigs and more, all reflecting careful observation. Check it out on the North Wales Potters web page.
I’m having fun adding ripples of clay around the aperture; so far, I have had modest results, some alterations to the tone, but not nearly as useable as those of the prehispanic instruments
I’ll post some sounds soon.
There’s too much to do, lovely things to do. Help!!!
- Categories:
musical instrument makers, SoundsWork Flutes, UK & Wales travel - Tags:
clay flutes
