Instrument-making: Performance day

Today was performance day for instrument-making. It was fun to be honest. Let's talk about my favourites first.

I liked many of the performances, but these are my top three in no particular order:

Cory B's group, Chris'(guy Chris) group, and Emile's group.

I loved the timbre of Cory B's group. I liked how they were all wind instruments too which gives it a really particular feel. It sounded very ethnic and made me think of being in a rainforest. My favourite instrument for this group was Cory's one with the glass bottle and rubber glove filled with water. I liked how simple it was and how clean and pure the sounds are.

Chris' group had great sounds too. I love the percussion there. If I remember correctly all members had percussion instruments, either that or three of them had percussion instruments. The rhythm in it felt young and fun, quite ethnic as well to be honest. For this group Chris' instrument produced my favourite sounds here.

Emile's group had heaps of instruments that were favourites of mine. My absolute favourite out of that group's instruments was Jenny's one though. The one with all the skewers and with marbles on the inside. I loved the sound of that, it sounds like rain. I quite liked the bass spring and the primitive guitar made by Emile as well. I thought the sounds were very well put together.

As for my group I'm not actually sure whether it turned out great or not. Personally, I think the sounds as individuals were great, but as a group I don't think they worked together enough. It felt a bit like the communication was down and there seemed to be some hesitation as well. I don't know whether this is just me being too critical of my own work, but I'll pass my final judgement once I get the footage of us performing off Edrian. I'll post it on here as soon as I've got the footage. Big thanks to him for filming us again today and huge thanks to Tom T for helping us with setting up as well.

Here's our performance:



Contribution:
For instrument-making in this week’s project all the roles of each member are very separate with each member having their own instrument.

I built my own instrument and brought in various materials that anybody could use. Such as balloons to make a membrane for drums or flutes, rubber bands for strings and to hold membranes in place, cans as resonators, and bits of scrap wood to mount things on to. I made mine out of two cans, four violin strings, one nylon string, one rubber band string, beaded balls to hold the nylon and rubber band strings into place, some kind rubber cylinder with a slot in it that can be used as tuning pegs for the strings and wood to mount the structure on to.

For actually performing together as a group I worked with the other string instrument in the group to create some form of melody while the remaining group members who had percussion instruments were in charge of creating the beat and deciding when to start and stop the performance. Performing together was actually quite difficult. I think it is because this group I had in particular was quite timid and quiet so nobody really had a strong lead in the performance to become the core and decide what goes on during it.


Edit (August 9 2011): After seeing the video it turns out we sounded quite alright. It was a great effort and the instruments actually do fit together to make a great combo of sounds. However, I still feel that communication was lacking as a group.