Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
Hey Luis, I've been bowing things for many years and currently own several bows. A few salient things that might interest you: 1) Suzuki makes very small bows for their graduated size violins for their method of teaching little kids. I went into Sylvain music and bought the very smallest bow that they sold for $25 and it has become my favorite of all of my bows (I have bass bows, cello bows, regular sized violin bows, tiny Suzuki bows and a bowed psaltery bow). It is by far the cheapest bow you can purchase. I just resin the hell out of it when playing bass, guitar, mandolin, banjo, oud or saz http://imagehost.vendio.com/bin/viewimage.x/00000000/sux2bepoor/2031.jpg?vvid=65324393&sp=1 2) Barry Cleveland, the fine guitarist and writer for Guitar Player magazine just told me he is saving his money becausea guy in Los Angeles is making a curved fretboard 'ViolGuitar', a six string normally tuned guitar with a curved bridge that is designed expressedly for bowing. I'll find out more from him about it. Barry uses a lot of bow on his CDs and did the other night if I"m not mistaken when we played together with Michael Manring and Robert Powell. He has several fine ones out and debuted at the Y2K6 loopfestival last year and will be playing again this year, thankfully http://www.barrycleveland.com/. 3) Using a traditional guitar, barr chords and or one of those beautiful rolling capos it's really great to throw a guitar into open tunings so that you can bow across the entire surface of the bow. 4) I use a bowed psaltery bow that I had customized (but which you could purchase through Lark in the Morning in California) that is a bowed symmetrical bow (curved shape). I customized mine by going out and finding the thinnest brass plating I could possibly find and then wrapping part of the curved wooden part of the bow. This creates an ersatz slide that allows you to use three techniques in one piece of music 1) turn it upside down and use it to 'hammer' the strings like a hammered dulcimer. (the small curved body is excellent for bouncing off the strings) 2) you can just bow the strings conventionally or 3) you can turn the bow upside down and use the brass portion as a slide By tuning a mandolin into an open tuning (I'm just in love with DADE because of it's lydian barr harmonics and sus2 feel) you use both hands to play the instrument in a drone line fashion (it's great for creating really intriguing loops that are, nonetheless, open ended to play anything on top of because they aren't dense harmonically speaking. I use a blue plastic tiki martini skewer as a hammer in one hand and my psaltery bow in the other to create different kinds of rhythmic or pad styled textures. Additionally, just to make it even more idiosyncratic, I prepare the mandolin with alligator clips and bicycle chains but then tune it to an open tuning once the instrument is prepared. It's a great droning timbre with all of these different kinds of strikes. I just wish that the wonderful Cimbalon player Michael Masley would sell his inventions..........he has invented hammered dulcimer hammers that have small curves bow at the very ends that velcro onto his fingers. Check his amazing music out for some ethereal bowed goodness. www.artistgeneral.com ************ and one last thought, Did you ever see the keyboardist Lyle Mays play with Pat Metheny back in the original days of his quartets on ECM records? He was fond of tuning an autoharp to open tunings, putting a mic on it and then occasionally strumming a lush chord over the top of his acoustic piano playing with a pic and his left hand. It was a lovely and ethereal sound. It occurred to me that the same thing could be done with simple children's zithers that are sold lots of places. These are cheap instrument (usually from $20-$40 each) and they are small.................you could easily put contact mics on a couple of them and tune them to some cool chords and just bow them or strike them at different places during your sets. Hey, I think I'm going to do that right now. I"ve collected a bunch of them Good luck with your bowing. love, Rick
