Bass Piano
On any particular afternoon, instrument builder Ross Manning can be found in the spare room of his home tinkering away with an assortment of materials, mechanisms and objects. ‘I usually start with the sound source. Like a sound generating circuit or mechanism that makes sound, from there I work out how to get a variety of different sounds from this mechanism and how they can be played.’
Modifying an existing musical instrument is a popular starting point for many instrument building experiments. Perverting, destroying, or adapting various components of an instrument and adding on new bits and pieces is all part of the invention.
It was a dinky plastic toy piano that inspired Manning to start tinkering: ‘I wanted to build some sort of a percussion instrument… but wasn’t sure what sounds the new piano would end up making.’
As with his other instruments, Manning is initially inspired to build something from a specific object or component, intrigued by their sound-making possibility: ‘I used the toy piano because it already had a good keyboard hammer mechanism I could adapt.’ Rather than building an instrument to produce an array of imagined sounds, you let sounds reveal themselves. Which is not to say that any sound will do, or that the sounds are inconsequential or left alone, but that it’s about seeing what sounds an object produces (e.g. metal springs) and making various adjustments as you go along.
Removing the piano’s plastic top, Manning prised out the small tuned metal bars lined up inside (the toy equivalent of piano strings) replacing them with an assortment of salvaged metal springs, lined up over the top of the plastic hammer mechanism.
The next stage was working out the best method for amplifying the springs. The first test was with small contact microphones, however these tended to pick up all the vibrations from the springs, mechanism, and plastic casing, resulting in a very muddled sound in which the individual springs were largely indistinguishable.
Manning’s solution for amplifying the instrument was to take a small spring reverb device (borrowed from a guitar amp), cut it in half, and mount the two parts to a bit of wood gaffer-taped to the piano case. Tensioned wires connect the various piano springs to the three reverb springs. Vibrations from the piano springs travel through the wire to the reverb springs and into the small transducers that convert the vibrations into electrical signals to be amplified. This customised pickup was perfect for working with the instrument’s quiet sounds.
Playing the Bass Piano is much like how you would play a normal toy piano, although the use of springs and pickups allows the player to extract a more varied array of sounds. Manning also suggests alternative approaches for playing the instrument: ‘It could be played with feedback – the springs have different resonating frequencies when put close to an amp. At the same time you could play it as a drone instrument by muting the different springs with your fingers.’
clatterbox will publish more of Ross Manning’s instruments very soon. Issue 1 of the sound HOUND zine features the instruments of Ross Manning.
