Re: OT: Chinese zither

In a message dated 2003:09:18 03:28:50 PM, isidora@ZAMORA.COM writes:

>So how are bamboo strip strings made and what do they look like?
    Like organic versions of metal packing ribbon or cargo strapping ;) and
just as painful... I speak from extremely masochistic experience as well...

>What sort of timbre do they have compared with strings made from other
>materials?
    Thinner bamboo strips have a fairly percussive, noticeably plucked noise
tone with little sustain and kalimba/thumb-piano-like high range.
    Thicker, broad bamboo strips produce an interesting effect: a dual
fundamental with one or the other tone dominating depending on plucking direction.
The string can seem to harmonize with itself - a quaint and attractive effect -
or, more adventurously, it can be a complex tone cluster. Even wider, broad
bamboo strips can have both dual fundamental and "a buzzing throb" when struck
with a plectrum or stick or a "buzzing drone" if bowed with a rosined
stick/bow.

on this website is a nice example of a bamboo tube-zither with a
nice-but-entirely-too-short sound sample (amongst "tons" of other examples of other
instruments and sound samples):

    Borneo Music of Sarawak
        http://www.takumedia.net/index%20music%202.htm

---  º°`°º ø,¸¸,ø º°`°º ø,¸¸,ø º°`°º ø,¸¸,ø º°`°º  º°`°º ø,¸~->

Hanuman Zhang, musical mad scientist
(no, I don't wanna take over the world, just the sound spectrum...)
http://www.boheme-magazine.net

"... Music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the
other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the
essence." - Schopenhauer, _The World as Will and Representation_

"... the distillation of experience into pure sound, a state of music, is
timeless and absolute." -Anais Nin

"...improvisation is about change, about flux rather than stasis. ...
improvisation is about a constant change." - Steve Beresford

improvisation: "a process of liberation, a working around the assumptions
that define our civilization, and the results are open-ended." - John Berndt

NATURE LOVES MUSIC:
Scientist Phil Uttley "said the music of a black hole could be called
improv." In "comparison to a specific artist or style, he said the late Greek
composer Iannis Xenakis used flicker noise to randomly generate pieces called
stochastic music. 'You could use the variations in the X-ray output of black holes to
produce just this sort of music.'"
    " [ ... ] 'Flicker Noise' - Nature's inaudible rhythms & patterns are "in
everything from heartbeats to climate change. Other astronomers have detected
flicker noise in X-ray outputs and in interplanetary magnetic fields."
    "Scientists say music is ubiquitous in Nature (Earth itself) and shows up
in the arrangements of the planets, in seascapes, and even in our
brainwaves." --- SPACE.com

"Any sufficiently advanced music is indistinguishable from noise"
(after Arthur C. Clarke's aphorism that any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguisable from magic.)" - John Chalmers, in email
response
to the quote _The Difference between Music and Noise is all in your Head_

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