BRIAN
RANSOM
Ceramic Instruments
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For Brian Ransom, the first stage inthe
development of a musical instrument is the
sound in his imagination. "I start with an idea of
the kind of sound I want," he says. "I imagine
the sound and I slowly work towards an image
of the form that will make that sound. As I go,
I use my best sense of aesthetics and image-
making to make the piece visually resonant as
well as acoustically resonant. It's important to
me that the two work together, the visual and
the acoustic."
Brian is a maker of ceramic musical
instru-
ments, and a skilled composer and performer
with them as well. Most of his instruments are
tuned
to work with one another in ensembles,
and in the ensembles he brings together instru-
ments of all types. There are winds, including
flutes, reeds, horns and less categorizable
types; there are various sorts of bar instru-
ments and chimes; there are drums, and there
are strings. All are made in ceramics, with the
addition of steel and string, animal skin and
even electronics.
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"Ceramic
Flugelhorn"
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Following
the conceptualization process
for a new instrument, the building process
begins. For Brian, this is not simply a matter of
making the instrument to match his precon-
ceived design. The instrument develops
through a long and patient process of proto-
typing: a model is made; it is played and
enjoyed; but then another model is made to
develop the idea further, and another, and
another. It's an ongoing search, this effort to
find and bring out the potential personality of
the new instrument type. "Everything you see,"
Brian says of his instrumentarium, "is probably
the product of hundreds of tries."
He
brings to the effort a lot of technical
know-how, having studied the shrinkage and
other physical properties of clay, the physics of
the firing process and the acoustics of the
sound-producing bodies. That know-how is
complemented by a generous dose of intuition,
born of years of experience. A range of influ-
ences comes into play: Brian has to his credit a
Master's thesis based on two years of research
on indigenous flutes and whistles of Peru; he
has worked closely with the Ghanaian master
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"Three
Hooters"
--husky-voiced wind instruments
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drummer Obo Adi; and he counts certain Asian traditions as important
influences as well. But the instruments are not imitative in any
direct sense. The designs are entirely his own. At the heart of
it, always, is the sound of the clay. Recalling his earliest encounters
with it, he speaks of "a haunting quality, or a strangely
hollow kind of sound, a little airy. There was something very
deep inside the tone that just really moved me."
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"Releasing
Deity"
Deities of Sound X
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One
particularly interesting set of Brian's instruments have come
into being through a different conceptual process. These are the
pieces --still works in progress at the time of this writing --that
he gives the name Deities of Sound. "I started having a lot
of unusual dreams a couple of years ago.
Very
powerful dreams. Many figures appeared in these dreams, sometimes
in a chorus, and at times individually. There was some deep and
practically indecipherable message that I got from these dreams
that I became obsessed with expressing." He started making
drawings inspired by these recurring subconscious images, and
eventually undertook to realize them in clay. There are now more
than ten deities, ranging in size from three to over five feet
tall. Each contains between four and eight wind-activated sound-producing
mechanisms, carefully tuned to work in ensemble with one another.
Several of them contain multiple chambers of water and air. When
they tip from side to side, water runs from one chamber to the
next, forcing air flows that give rise to sounds. The deities
have been played individually and in groups, by musicians and
sometimes by dancers who tip them as part of a dance. How many
deities will there be altogether? "They just keep coming,"
says Brian, "so I keep making more."
Article
from:
Gravikords, Whirlies & Pyrophones by Bart Hopkin: Experimental
Musical Instruments, © 1996 Ellipsis Arts...All Rights Reserved.
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