some musical instruments

[storm]

seeing a Musical Instruments Topic Thread on another primitive skills forum inspired me to collect my instruments that i use with my outdoor school students and share them here. i hadn't realized that shell was a commonality amongst the instruments.

at upper left there is a Nuttall's Cockle shell shaker with wild pea (some species of Lathyrus) seeds inside, covered with western red cedar bark.

at upper right is a tubeworm casing that i found on the beach in malibu. i plugged one end of it with deer hide glue.

at bottom is a giant wavy turban snail shell horn (the shell is about as big as my hand, fingers included!) i also found in malibu. notice the hole that i drilled with a quartz-crystal-tipped hand drill. it works similarly to a conch shell horn (but more difficult).

these are CA mussel shell shakers, bound with deer intestine and hide glue. the one on the left began to crack (presumably as it dried), so i doubled the intestine lashings.

deer hoof rattle. i collected the hooves from two deer in the temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula of WA (i will end up there someday--best place i've encountered to live with and off the land). the tiny hooves to the left came from a starved fawn that i found on the shore of Lake Crescent (near Port Angeles).

along with some tecates (the CA clapper sticks, not the mexican beer), it is great fun to make music with the 5th and 6th graders who come to the outdoor school for a week...

 

[stovie]

Very interesting. Not being an expert on the archaeology of the Americas, can you tell me, are the instuments based on any precedents?

I can almost feel the warm glow of pre-historic coals, and the rhythmic cacophany filling the woodland night

 

[storm]

the door hoof rattle has a strong representation in antiquity, and the bull kelp horn has precedent in some oral histories of pacific northwest tribes...

 

[rich59]

Can you attach sound files to this forum?

 

[storm]

i neglected to include a bull kelp horn that i've had for a few years:

noticing that the end of that bull kelp horn was getting ragged, a couple days ago i re-enforced it with a ring of hollowed-out yucca flowering stalk, some buckskin strapping and deer hide glue:

and i made a new horsetail pan flute:

i usually secure the Equisetum lengths with yucca fibers, but decided to see whether or not the deer hide glue will hold them in place by itself...

 

[stovie]

They're very interesting, Storm.

Does the horn have a high or low pitch? It looks quite small, so I am assuming high

The "Pan Pipes". The tops looked scorched. Why is this? And do you tune by "ear"?

Being someone who is "tone deaf" I find it amazing that people can just say "that's a C" or whatever....

 

[match]

I'm really impresse by the kelp horn - never thought of doing that, but now I look at it I reckon it would form a nice solid wooden piece when dry - maybe a similar thing could be done to make a didgeridoo or similar instrument.

I'm guessing that the scorching on the horsetail is because its afibrous plant, and when it ws cut the cutting left small fibre ends hanging - scorching the ends would tidy these up and stop it fraying?

My personal favourite primitve instruments are wooden blocks - either used as clave by banging them together, or cutting notches along a piece and daggnig the other piece up and down the ridges to mak a clave-like knocking sound.

Lovely to see that other people are playing with these areas of bushcraft and primitive technologies - having fun with music is as important to me when I'm out and about as starting fires or building shelters