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It would be so much easier if I was a conductor bidding farewell to an eminent symphony orchestra. I dream of packing a box or two of scores, my baton, my tuxedo, and jet-setting to conduct Mozart in Marseilles (or Riga) next week.
But actually I'm a musician, composer, game sound designer, music teacher, and performer who has spent the last 27 years carrying, storing, playing, and loving a crazy - I'll earn that adjective in the next sentence, I promise - collection of instruments: Violins, vntage metal bedpans, a "Violin-Uke" (from 1905!), flutes, cymbals (some broken, don't ask), a tam-tam, 4 toy pianos, a MicroMoog (and other synthesizers), trumpet, drums, xylophone, and a whang-boinger. This list is nowhere complete, trust me.
Did I mention I live in a very small space?
My situation, though uncommon, is not unique: I'm a musician with too many instruments and too little room. I'm not just a collector who can smell a garage sale or outdoor market 6 blocks away. I also inherited a Noah's Ark of instruments from my beloved grandfather; his music store rented musical instruments to school bands for over 40 years. I don't by the way, use sampled, computer-based virtual instruments; Grandpa Pete said "You have to touch it to really play it."
I want to solve - or at least address - this rather common problem in an unconventional way: I want to create a 20 to 30-minute sound documentary that bids a creative farewell to my collection of instruments. There are some I can sell, but many of the instruments are too weird for money (e.g. the "whang-boinger"), so I want to find and meet interesting musicians (via craigslist, community bulletin boards, SoundCloud meetups, and? ) who will use them.
Listeners will hear the instruments, interesting extracts of my recording sessions, interviews with folks who receive (buy or accept as gifts or donations) my instruments, and my own reflections on bidding farewell to my orchestra. Lastly, I want to convey my quest to winnow my instrumentarium into an extremely portable as well as inspiring orchestra that can fit on a medium-sized (5 feet wide, 4 feet tall, 1 foot deep) bookshelf.
- Genre
- Phonography, Field Recording, Sound Art