PREPARING INSTRUMENTS for LOOPING (and any other performance)

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Tony's post about Bart Hopkins new book on Guitar Preparation got me 
inspired.

I have experimented with a lot of different ways to "prepare" 
instruments for unconventional
performance.

I thought it would be cool to assemble all the different creative ways 
everyone on this list has
figured out how to 'prepare' an instrument.


My own tiny arsenal for guitar and other string 'preparation':


1)  large and tiny alligagor clips   (the size has a huge impact on the 
resultant timbre so try lots of different sizes)
2) Magnets-   from very tiny (Bucky Balls) to very large ones (these are 
very hip, especially when attached to alligator clips)
3)  Martini skewers  (I particularly love a set of blue plastic Tiki 
ones that I found because they have
     incredible bounce characteristic (not unlike hammer dulcimer 
mallets) and you can turn them over
     and use them as tiny plastic 'slides'  to change the pitch of the 
instrument
4)  Suzuki 1/16 sized bows..................amazing and only  $25 USD 
for a wonderful approach to any string instrument
5)  E-bows and, better yet,  multiple E-bows..............make any 
multiple string instrument with metal strings a fantastic drone instrument
6)  Metallic Chinese 'health' balls (the ones that have little chimes 
inside of them).............try rolling these guys down any string 
instrument
       for random pitch shifting experiments
7)   Brushes of all kinds:
       a)  vegetable brushes  (they come in varying 'stiffnesses' so 
their texture is different
       b)  metallic (careful, these eat up strings on good 
instruments)  I love the kinds used , specifically, for flea eradication 
on pets
       c)  the ones that come off of temporary hair dye products 
(specifically on 'Dye Hard' products or Hot Topic 'Temporary Dye' products
       d) any drum stick or mallet you can think of (I particularly 
love velcro-ing different kinds of bells and rattle sounds to strikers 
like this)
 8)   Slides of any kind  (glass, metal, ceramic, bottle caps, backs of 
finger nails,  any damn thing)
9)     Vibrators  (again, anything--- back massagers, dildos, clitoral 
vibrators,  anything that vibrates a string potentially)
10)   Drills (again, anything that attaches to a drill that can cause 
rapid re-playing of the string---Eddie Van Halen, notroriously used
          guitar picks inbedded into a drill bit that allowed for 
hyper, faster than human,  picking techniques.
11)   Okay, there are more but I"m running out of steam...
12)   What the f*ck else?

Rick Walker