Monday, September 15, 2003

i just got back from a wonderful camping trip with the nothern california flute circle. we had some incredible jam sessions around the campfire and some improvizational sessions during the day. i brought along a new gamelan tuned instrument that i purchased from richard cook. richard creates these instruments that he calls freenotes and even though they are tuned in a different pentatonic scale from the native american flute, it was still a very harmonious mix between the two instruments. i bought the wing in the key of "a" and we were able to improvise along with it on a native american flute in the key of a. richard also creates a unique instrument that he call a "spinner". the spinner is a set of gemelan tuned bars arranged in a barrel pattern and then hung from a rope. you wind up the rope and then randomly strike the bars as then spin past - very cool.

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