The Well-Prepared Guitar, or; "The Plank"

I found this home made instrument on ofsoundmind.wordpress.com. A three-string zither employed with alternate types of strings. I’m fond of not fancy looking wooden instruments, so this one is what I’m pretty keen on. I like the rough looks, perhaps I’m going back to it one day too, if my work becomes to slick in design. These terrible bass guitars exist with all kinds of round horns and flashy decorative sun burst paint glows on it. If I see a bass guitar player with for instance a bling bling Warwick bass, I immediatelly doubt the player can have a good taste for music. One of the reasons I don’t like guitar conventions very much. A guitar is not a jukebox or vintage car, but a tool to make sound with.

The person who builds the Well-Prepared Guitar sure has a good feeling for what causes great sound. I see a long spring used as one of the three strings. This spring looks a bit too weak in tension. I think a spring with some more power can give more exiting results in altering the timbre. But a good idea though. The site has an mp3 where you can here the builder play. What’s good about his concept is that he uses the shape of the ball chain and the spring for his playing technique and plucks the strings in series by strucking the alternate types of strings along the direction of the string, comparable with scratching a wounded thick bass string with a plectrum.

Listening to the mp3 learns the ball string is changing the sound like a string enhanced with clasped objects, like clarified in Chapter 2 – Prepared Guitar Techniques, 2.5 Clasping Objects. But as said the playing technique this type of string allows is more surprising and exiting to me. I can’t trace how he managed the feedback sounds appearing in the mp3, because he uses extra effect pedals. I doubt if the instrument actually causes it, but it sure gives a pleasant sound.

Original text of the builder:

Some new noise makers from OSM laboratories

July 15, 2007

Since LATRALMAGOG took off, I have been busier than ever creating new sound making devices. Having an outlet that is consistent has really been an inspiration to take a lot of ideas I have had and put them to action. Here's some of the newer additions:

The Well-Prepared Guitar, or; "The Plank".

Seeing Keith Rowe a while back, was a real inspiration. I admit I'm very late to the free-improv party, but at least I showed up! Seeing Rowe play the guitar as he does brought up a bunch of questions for me though. Aside from the cleverness of using a guitar in this way, and the excitement over having to develop around this restriction, what is the point of it being six normal strings? Is it in standard tuning? If so why? Why does it have frets? Wouldn't it be more interesting and "free-er" if it didn't?

Now, I'm not attacking Keith Rowe here, I'm sure he has perfectly viable arguments for all of these questions, and he certainly is not being hurt by whatever restrictions his guitars provide. The point is that these very questions began to inspire me. Why should a guitar be anything but a couple of pickups and some resonating metal, if it is to be used in this form of abstract improvisation? These questions began to form in my mind a "guitar" whose only purpose was to suspend metal "string objects" and amplify them. So from my junk pile arose "The Plank". A guitar that is "prepared" by its very nature.

I built the guitar from the guts of an Fender I had laying around. I routed out some wood piece I found in my alley and put tuners and a bridge on, from what I had laying around. The strings are the interesting part. They are spaced so they can be played in a more isolated fashion and are themselves improvised in that they are experiments in string material and structure. Currently the strings are as such: 1) rigid metal wire 2) ball chain and "D" string (I think) 3) spring and "B" string. I have found that due to the odd combinations of materials, the strings vary wildly in sound due to where/how they are actuated.

From the sample, below, I'm sure you will get a sense of how interesting it is to just "play with" the instrument. I like just hooking up a few pedals, picking up objects off my work bench and trying different ways of producing sound. I have been using this a lot lately and I think it will become a mainstay of my arsenal.

Go to list of experimental instruments built by other inventors

Go to the table of contents

Back to home