The Floater Turned Shaker

When one has a ballcock and a few ball bearings lying around, one should make a shaker.
I was one of those ones and I did make a shaker, but the Brian Poirier broke it. Bastard.

A few comments I liked mostly because Dave is sweat talking me.

DaveX said...

That's just "plumb" perfect. WAY too cool. Your instruments kill me-- they're so elegant and simple-- I'm always saying "how the heck did I NOT think of THAT?"

Inspirational! --DaveX

10:53 PM

iner said...

hey Dave thanks fer dropping by

11:54 AM

The Ukulele thump Piano

Well I had a busted Ukulele body and way to many rake tines. What's a guy to do? No really I have to know.

Duel Sided Shaker

It's not much to look at and it makes a horrible sound.
I love it.
I love you.

Old Bongo Bodied Thumb Piano

What can I say about this one. It's an old half of a Bongo that I put a bunch of rack tines on. I do that a lot.

Aluminum Xylophone

Okay, this thing just plain sucked so it got smashed real good.

Tongue Drum Three

I would have to say that to date I still feel the first tongue drum I built was the best out of the three. This one is close, and by far better than Tongue Drum Two the Adventures in Naughty Pine. For this one I used a different type of wood which was great. All the sites I have been to suggest using a harder wood then soft. I think that’s why number two sounded so flat and boring. I don’t actually know what kind of wood this is that I was using; it was just something I found at one of my local second hand shops. These were part of a four box set of containers one might find in a kitchen from the seventies. Coffee and flour were once the jobs of these two boxes, and now a whole world of noise awaits them. Of course I had to add on the fridge grate bit. I think I will look back on the year Two Thousand and Six as the year of the refrigerator grate. Those two little sticks with the knobs on the tops are the sticks one would use to beat this instrument down.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm going at my mother's home this week end, I'm sure she has that kind of wood boxes in her attic, So maybe I will make my first tongue drum too !

Bloggiewoogie
11:45 AM
Anonymous said...

I recently made a very basic four-tongue drum using an Altoids tin and a knife. I now have a rudimentary tongue drum and a messed-up knife, as well as lots of fun.

I gotta say, I never would have thought of any of the instruments I make without having visited your site, Iner. You're quite an inspiration.
1:36 AM
iner said...

Ah shucks
6:45 PM

The Evolution of the Fridge

Fridge grates, oh fridge grates I love you. If I was singing a song about fridge grates that’s what I would sing, but I’m not so let it go man. This is just a blog about crazy instruments.

Over the years I have used refrigerator grates in quite a few different instruments. There is the Two Stringed Golf and Refrigerator Bass one of my first instruments built that I actually liked, and the more percussive instruments such as the Percussive Computer Panel, and The Things from the Fridge series 1, 2, and 3. I guess the point I’m try to make is that the fridge grate has become one of those materials that has a permanent place in my spaceship/workshop. Much like the metal salad bowls, or the lovely and talented fan grates, and last, but most defiantly not least, the Chicken Cooker. Yes the fridge grate is now part of the local junkman’s list of must haves, and I think it is this instrument that put it there.

I have yet to name this instrument, as it stands now The Evolution of the Fridge is where it’s at. These things can and will change with time, but for right now let me talk a little on this new piece. In one of my fits of bowing madness I came up with the idea of bending the grate in a semi circle fashion in order to make the bowing of each of the tines more distinct for one, but also so that each individual tine is easier to reach. This worked out just as I had thought it would. The chamber I built was more of a piece together a few of the scraps I have lying around the spaceship and see what happens. I find the recycling of my own garbage to be just as rewarding as the recycling of others.

Once the resonating chamber was built I ran two springs down the center of the box, attached the face and grate, and then started bowing. I was getting some really cool sounds with the bow, but it wasn’t until I brought it out to a Jam night that I truly discovered it’s magic. Getting tired of bowing and the sounds I was making I decided to play the instrument in a bit more of a percussive manor. At first it was just a few taps on the box, then I would run a pen back and forth across the tines, but it was when I started plucking the tines that I got the sounds this instrument was suppose to make. All of a sudden I had a really messed up looking bass on my hands. I spent the rest of the night playing the Evolution that way, and have continued to play it like that since. Occasionally I will pull out the bow, but that’s only when the tips of my fingers get raw, and need a break.

I look forward to seeing how the fridge grate will evolve in my work over the next few years. It’s a good thing I have this blog to keep as my record.

Here are some comments that were left for this instrument.

Improvisors’ pool said...

Aww, this one looks sweet. Wait, they all look sweet. You must add mp3 files.

11:22 PM

The Lone Guitarist said...

yeah some mp3 files of these cool instruments/creations would help put them into perspective a bit

7:28 AM

Failed Spooning

This instrument did not work out at all, and I think I know why.
Let me start by telling you where the idea came from, because it wasn’t mine. I saw it in a music store in Fredericton New Brunswick. A couple of spoons mounted on a piece of wood. How easy is that? Well I messed mine up, and I think it’s because of the spoons I used. It would appear to me that these spoons are cast. What I need to make this work better is spoons with some tension in them so they can bounce up and down a bit more easily. When I do remake this instrument I think I may also want to hollow out the piece of wood so I get a bit of a resonance chamber going on. Live and learn.

Here are some comments that were left for this instrument.

missy_2_shoes said...

try try again... I actually bought one of these readymadespoonsets for my arthritic Grampa who can no longer hold two regular spoons to rattle on anymore. It was cool, and yours look way nicer. (Sam with the Cameron family is a killer spooner... and have you seen his slinky instrument? I bet you guys compare notes :)

12:01 PM

Tongue Drum Two: The Adventures of Naughty Pine

This here is my second attempt at constructing a tongue drum. Ever since I split this crazy blog up I have been thinking that I need to start building more percussive instruments, and instead of just duct tapping a bunch of different sized cans together I thought I might try my hand at actually building something from scratch. I thought I would start with the tongue drum. I built one about two years back but it was very small, and only had the two slats, that I might like to add were equal in length, which is something that you might want to try and avoid if you’re looking for different tones. Back in the good old days I built stuff by what my eyes remembered, there was no math, there was no science. I was just flying by the seat of my pants. Well two days ago when I started to build the new tongue drum that all changed.
I used pine in the construction only due to the fact that the piece of hardwood I had cut for this new drum snapped clean in half as I was finishing my grooves. Pine was all I had left so I moved forward and started to make my cuts. At first the grooves in between where much smaller, but two bad things were happening. One, they would occasionally rub together when struck, and two, there wasn’t much volume to be had. So I got out the jig saw and free handed the re-cut. I do not recommend free cutting with a jigsaw if your loved ones are apposed to loud obscenities coming from a space room somewhere deep in the bowels of a two bedroom apartment. Oh and it might be dangerous to boot. So after fixing my cuts and giving the thing a good sanding I was ready to piece it together. Before putting the under plate on I decided to mount a spring inside the box running the length of the instrument. I can’t yet tell if this is doing anything, but I will let you know as soon as I bring it out to a Jam night.
Before I go I would just like to say that if you do decide to build one of these, try to find a harder wood then pine, over all I would say the piece as a whole sounds a bit flat, and that’s that.

Chime Sticks

Thumb Piano Eight

I guess this is where I try to use up all the scrap pieces of wood and other interesting bits of metal. I do enjoy building them, and always bring them out to recordings and jams. It also gives me something to do when I’m waiting for the glue, paint, and varnish to dry on some of the bigger pieces, which in turn helps to keep the creative juices flowing. This one is made from rake tines, but I’m starting to run out of them. I think I may have to try an all aluminum one next.

Rain Sticks Three

What can I say? I had way too many nails kicking around taking up valuable scrap wood real estate.

My First Gong

Ha. I just hammered out my first gong/symbol. I have been putting off trying to do this for years now, but let me just say it’s a lot easier then I thought it would be. In total I spent about an hour bashing away at it. When I say bashing I mean controlled wailing. It was some kind of crazy aluminum metal mix but I’m not entirely sure, and I’m only guessing at that do to its somewhat pliable nature. It fit perfectly on top of an old disk break I have; they’re great when using them as the base for stands. The one side was for the larger circle, and the other was for the smaller one in the center. This will defiantly be added to my regular list of junk items that are gold.

1 comments:

Mike Whitla said...

How does this sound iner?

Is it a specific pitch or just a bunch of overtones?

Metal Hand Drum

Well after much waiting, my good friend Jeremy finally sent me a photo of this instrument I had built some time ago. This is one of the many remnants from my past, when I was not so good at documenting my sculptures or paintings. Oh the pieces I’ve lost to laziness and indifference. It’s a good thing that we jam together on a weekly basis or this one may have been lost forever.

The face of the instrument is a chicken cooker. Back then I was trying to find ways to put those things into any and every piece I was working on. I have since refined that process. I must say as far as metal percussive instruments I have built, this one has to be the least offensive. I placed a contact mic right in the center of the plate, so as you play outward from the middle the tone and volume change. To add to that effect I added tone and volume knobs, and I find that playing this instrument with your fingers gives the best results. The large rectangular object that sweeps out from the side was part of the amplification system out of an old gramophone that was beyond repair. All of it pieces found a good home and a new life still within the music industry.

The bass is part of a disk brake system; I find these in front of my local garage all the time. They are nice and heavy and keep the instrument from bouncing around to much. The pole on which this instrument is attached is from an old salon hairdryer, so it has the option of pivoting back and forth to suit one’s playable comforts.

With the contact mic right in the center on the face plate one is able to place other objects on this instrument, in order to amplify them. I once rocked out for 40 minutes with a thump piano, a bow, and a brass bell using this technique. And yes you can rock out with a thumb piano.

Hydrofridge-a-phone

Refrigerator grates now have made it into six of the last eight instruments I have built. I still feel like I have not yet captured the soul of my fridge yet. There are some things that man should just never understand.

This one is a bit different in that I turned what has been a recent problem of things leaking in my fridge into an artistic solution where I just add water before hand. That’s right, this new one needs water to reach its full potential. This isn’t my first attempt at water based instruments and probably won’t be my last. The first was the Water Fisher Tube which worked out alright, but never really saw the light of day. I built it and immediately hung it in a bar. The second was the Round Bowed String Thing. Which saw a bit more action. It has traveled around in different art shows, been used live on stage, and is in the process of being recorded for an album (or something similar to whatever a group recording noises of experimental instruments can be). The Hydrofridge-a-phone

is just an evolutionary process of building. All my contact points are sealed with water resistant silicon, the chamber of the instrument is free of obstructions, and for this one I had the foresight to add an air hole for easy draining. I’m guessing it holds about 120 ounces of liquid, but really I think about twenty to thirty ounces might be enough to do the trick. What trick you ask? It’s the trick of messing with the pitch of the instrument; you can add as little or as much as you like, though I suspect there is probably a cutoff point. Once you have added the water, start bowing the refrigerator tines. As you do this just slowly turn the instrument on an angle, swishing around the water inside. If all goes well you will start to hear the pitch of the tines start to bend slightly.

The best example I can think of where this technique is used to its fullest potential would be an instrument designed by Richard Waters called the Waterphone. Not only is it quite lovely to look at, but it is also a beautiful sounding instrument.

Maybe one day I too can have an instrument I’ve designed be named after me. Inerphone is too obvious, but how about the Inertar, no wait I think I’ll call it the Inerimbau, or the Ineriano. Yeah, these are all stating to sound great; I think I’ve spent too much time out of the spaceroom.

Time to recompress.

Iner out.

Fat Thumbs Piano

Once again a piece from the Excess Space Baggage series a five tongued thumb piano mounted on some kind of napkin holder. All these lovely things were just lying around the spaceroom so I thought I would mount them all together and see what happens.

I still feel that I have yet to really rap my head around the true potential of the thumb piano, but I feel confident that day will soon come.

3 comments:

Matt said...

I have a double bridge thumb piano made with a gourd. There is a hole in each side (3 total; those two and the sound hole under the tines) that allow you to put your fingers there and if you continually touch the hole and move away from it you get a really fun vibrato sound.

I'll upload it to one of my sites and send you the link to it; my description may not be all too great.

Happy Tuesday!

--Matt.

9:55 AM

iner said...

that would be cool Matt thanks

1:05 PM

Michael said...

What are the tines on this one?

--

Relating to what Matt said - I once had a thumb piano with similar holes in the side that was fun to play by covering up one of the side holes and putting the other one up to your mouth so you could use your mouth/vocal cavity to shape the resonance, jawharp style..

11:05 AM

Little Tiny Things from the Fridge

Once again the fridge grates have taken over, slowly I think my obsessions have moved from chicken cookers and metal salad bowls over to refrigerator grates. I may have to start a whole subsection for this category.

This piece is part of the Excess Space Baggage series, which you can learn more about in the next few blog entries.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

mini ovens grates are also great !

This is my new everyday obsession to find on the pavement of Paris.

check our site www.ana-r.org we now have a museum part, would you like to participate and send us some picture and mp3 of one of your wonderful intruments ?
let us know,

Cosmo

Alien Bell Monster Two

I liked the first Alien Bell Monster so much that I had to build a second. This is by far the dirtier and more dangerous of the bell monsters, but it had to be done.

It would seem that for the past few weeks I have been going through the spaceship in search of wild and weird parts that just don’t seem to fit anywhere else. Once I find them I make all those odd balls fit together whether they like it or not. So the next four posts will be of just that. I think I will call them Excess Space Baggage

I’m looking forward to recording this beast and then fining it a proper home.

Some things you will find on the second bell monster are a kids bicycle bell, a sink drain, two carburetor caps, a refrigerator grate, a tea kettle, two metal salad bowls, a circler saw blade, some weird metal disks I found on an old Japanese massager, a little tiny kids cymbal, plus a bunch of other various metal parts.

The Bell Tower of Babel

After having such a sonic reward from building the Alien Bell Monster I decided to expand on the idea a little. Basically I added a bunch more bells, which aren’t really bells. There are soap dishes, serving bowls, metal cups, little trinkets I find in the neighborhood, and OK maybe a couple of bells.

The tower stands at a whopping 130 cm or for all my friends south of the boarder 51 inches. There are 21 bell like objects mounted up the pole at varying heights and placements. I tried to set them into groups of three or four that sounded good together. Also attached to the pole is a spring that runs almost the full length of the piece, and one tunable piano string. The bass of the instrument is a disk from a breaking system of some body’s car. Who’s car? I have no idea.

Things From the Fridge 3 Strings and Things

My Oblique Strategy for the Things from the Fridge 3 Strings and Things was You are an Engineer

Oddly enough the same card came up for the Things from the Fridge 2. It was at that point that I decided to remove the cards from the deck after they had been chosen.

Things from the Fridge 2

My Oblique Strategy for the Things from the Fridge 2 was You are an engineer

Hail Mary Full of Grace Rebuild

The title says it all. I wasn’t really happy with the direction this instrument was going so I decided to add a few different features to it. The most obvious of that being the similarities to the two slide stringed instruments I have recently built. You can just scroll down a little to see some images of them. If you would like to see the original version of this instrument just click here.

I am still hoping that I won’t go to hell for cutting up these rosary beads.

Shimmering Swirl Chimes

Kick Swirl

Little Tongue Drum One

Sometimes I fell like I post any and everything I do. That’s not true. I built this instrument some time ago, and kind of just lost track of it. There are a few out there like that.

A very simple instrument to build that is easy and fun to play. You can suck as bad as I do, and still be able to pull this one off. It would be nice to have a bunch of these with different tunings.

Thumb Piano Six “The Dragon Fly’s Head”

Thumb Piano Five

The most boring looking of all my thumb pianos to date is the Thumb Piano Five. Don’t let the name fool you, this thumb piano is a maniac. Thumb pianos or “Kilimba” as the Hippies like to call them don’t get any zanier than this one. Just look at those wacky tongues. That’s how you can tell crazy, the tongues.Here’s a sketch I did of a Kilimba. It has nothing to do with the one in the photo. I like to use pencils.

The Percussive Computer Panel

I don’t know if I should put this on my experimental instrument page or my lost in time and space page.

This is part of my spaceship, the percussive part of my spaceship.

As I’m writing this it has occurred to me that the spaceship could in fact be the largest experimental instrument I have built to date.

As you can see there are many different things you can play on this panel. Some of the things include, saw blades, refrigerator grates, and numerous springs.

This entire box is built on hinges so you can open or close them to get different levels of sound. The box not only acts as a resonator, but it also holds all my painting gear, tools odd electronic things that must be destroyed, and some 8mm video cassettes from my misspent youth.

It’s practical, playable, and occasionally projects me into outer space.

Alien Bell Monster

The Alien Bell Monster is constructed out of phone bells, a tea kettle, some weird brass candy dish poached egg holders, metal goblets, and a brass cup. Just Click on the link below to hear a wee tiny bit the Alien Bell Monster



Alien Bell Monster with multitap delay.wav

Rain Stick

Aluminum Percussive Tube with Bell

That’s really all there is to say about this piece. It’s an aluminum tube with a bell free floating in the bottom. You play it percussively. It sounds good. Maybe I should call it The Aluminum Percussive Tube with Bell that Sounds Good I really wanted this post to be funnier than it turned out to be.

Things I find in the Fridge

“The only good refrigerator is a dead refrigerator.” If I was to write a movie about some crazy guy that builds instruments, dresses and furniture out of garbage that would be the line I use right before our hero puts a shotgun blast through the brains of one of the army of undead refrigeration units.

Refrigerator grates are another one of my favorites. It’s right up there with stainless steel salad bowls, but still a bit behind chicken cookers (just read some of the other blog entries and you’ll understand what I’m talking about)

This grate did in fact come from my fridge. Luckily enough for me there was a new fridge in our kitchen. I have found over the years that, in the interest of harmonious relationships that one should not dismantle working appliances for art sake.

This, thank god was not a working appliance. Every six months or so I would have to get out the hammer and a slot screw driver and go on an ice expedition into the deepest coldest recesses of our refrigerator, often uncovering ancient bottles of hot sauce, or some weird condiment my mother had given me years ago because she thought it tasted like crap. The ice would build up to be about a foot and a half thick in some places. Once I found a human hand, or rather a human like hand.

At this point you’re probably wondering what this has to do with building and the functionality of musical instruments. Absolutely nothing, but it sounds infinitely more interesting than saying I build a rectangular box out of wood and mounted a fridge grate on it.

Thumb Piano 4 Little Thunder

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Thumb Piano 3 the Hail Mary Full of Grace Model

Thumb Piano 2 The V Model

This is the second thumb piano I've built in a month. What's up with that? Actually I have loved making them. This one was inspired by an artist named Victor Gama. He is an instrument builder and a performer. Last month I did a show with Victor and drum builder named David Hind at the Harbourfront Center called All Over The Map: A Feast of Global Sounds. Now all I can think about are thumb pianos and drums. The V in the name is for Victor if you haven't already figured that out.

The instrument consists of one brass bowl I found on one of my many junk shop excursions, and the hexagonal disks I found in the coach house behind my watering hole. Each disk is cut slightly smaller than the last.

I think I will be making many more of these things in the months to come.

Big Joe

Big Joe's the name. What can I say about this one. It's a big frickin' drum with six strings stretched across the skin, and three strings that run from the end of the neck to the base of the drum. Not only do the add a nice lower tone to the instrument, but depending on the tension you apply to them can affect the pitch of the top six strings.

Rhythm Stick

This is a photo collage I did of the Rhythm Stick, partly for art sake, but mostly because the instrument is over five feet tall and at it's greatest length only six inches. This makes it hard to shoot with a good background in a small apartment. The Rhythm Stick can be plucked, struck, bowed, stomped, smacked, and whacked. The wood for the stick was taken out of an old basement, it was the banister from a staircase we were tearing out. I figure it has to be close to a hundred years old. There are three very light gauge acoustic strings near the head of the instrument, and one long piano string that runs down the length of the pole. The head is made from an old wooden salad bowl. I'm guessing by the look of it, some time in the seventies it was made. The face of the head was carved out of a wooden sugar container, which I believe may also have originated in the seventies. The attachment piece from the head to the pole was taken off a lamp, which I'm just going to say was probably from the seventies. There is a nice brass handle mounted off to the back, and if you look just below the tuning pegs there are eight handmade figure eight swirls that I use to make my metal dresses. If you would like to see some of those dresses click here.

Rusty, the saw blade steel drum.

I love Rusty, though I don't think he cares to much for me. There are cuts and scratches on me everywhere. Eleven different sized saw blades to cut and scrape you as often as you like.
I got this idea from a book that Jen had brought home from the library. I believe it was called Sound Designs or Instrument Designs, I'm not sure. If you know please tell me so I can stop sounding like an idiot. The gentlemen who's name escapes me at the moment created what he called the Wheels of Time. I liked it so much that I built my own. I did have to follow my own rules in the construction of such things. The blades could not be new. They had to be found or found cheap. Found cheap was what they turned out to be. Rusted and used. Just the way I like it.

ok it has only been a few days since i posted this instrument, but I have found the book and the names of the authors.
Sound Designs: A Handbook of Musical Instrument Building
Reinhold Banek & Jon Scoville
Anybody interested in building there own instruments should try and find a copy of this book.
iner out.

Bamboo xylophone

I know that this is not the most experimental of experimental instruments but, that's just the way it works some times.
I found these pieces of bamboo when I was on vacation in mid July, and thought to myself hey why don't I make a xylophone. I've always wanted a xylophone.

View this clip on Vimeo

Tin cup badness

Alright. This is exactly what the title says it is Tin Cup badness.
I had such high hopes for this one. In my many attempts to impress the drummer in Jon Was A Machine who's name is Sean. I attempted, and still attempting to make many different percussive trinkets for him to add to his kit. Now, one such as myself who knows absolutely nothing about drumming and the good sounds that go along with it, thought it would be easy to screw a bunch of old metal cups that Jen had bought me to the back of an old wooden chair I found on the street. Let me tell you this. My thoughts were wrong. Very wrong. It sounds and looks like crap. So after I finish typing this i think I may have to go and smash it.
Tin Cup badness be gone.

Thumb Piano 1

What can I say? I have always wanted a thumb piano. I built this after I did a show at the Harbourfront Center with two other artists. Victor Gama, and David Hind.
The piano was built from a weird bowl and a funky hand carved face plate I found at the Goodwill. The tines were from a rake head I found lying in the middle of Queen Street watching cars run it over. I knew it had to be saved and built into a thumb piano. There are four round pieces of wood attached to it. Two are mounted underneath the tines about a half an inch apart. The third one is mounted on top of the tines in between the two underneath. The fourth is free floating and place underneath to help apply pressure. You can adjust the tuning by loosening the top piece of wood and sliding the tines back or forth to whatever tuning turns you on. So there.

Various Percussive Sticks

Aluminum and Copper Chimes

These are a few chimes I have built. I know they're not very experimental, but they were an interesting exercise. The aluminum chimes i built from a couple of chimes I found at the Goodwill. Now for those of you that are saying right now "oh how hard can it be to attach a set of chimes to a piece of wood" well let me tell you. I went through four different types of string and fishing wire. Some materials just dampen the sound something awful. Next is the fact that tying the little noisy pieces of metal to the eye screws proved to be quite the pain in the arse. There was much cursing that went on in the hour and a half that it took me to attach ten chimes to a piece of wood. Jen just left the room and my putty mouth behind. In the end I do enjoy the way it looks and the sound it makes, but I am going to have to take it out of the window. The sounds are starting to make me go mad.
The copper chimes were a bit more of a challenge. I cut each piece myself with the help of the book Sound Designs which I talk about in the part about rusty the saw blade steel drum. i actually cut two of each and hung them on both sides to fill the sound out a bit more. I have nothing else to say about chimes right now.

Sun Flowers Of Death Phase Two

The Sunflower of Death. That is what Girasol Del Muerte translates to. I came up with the name after I played a gig with my old band called Manna Machine. Not only did I repeatedly cut and scratch myself on the many tines of pain, but I was running a guitar string through a couple of the tines when the end of the string fell out of my hand and directly into the one opening I had left on my power bar. Not only did I get an obvious shock from this, but I also blew my new volume pedal up, and as this was going on the owner of the bar we were playing at had been called upstairs to one of the apartments, by a lady we like to call the music hater, who constantly complain about the volume of music, especially the volume of Manna Machine music. So as there owner of the bar is upstairs I manage to blow up my volume pedal which sent a terribly loud constantly rising buzz and hum through to my amp which ended in a ear pounding thud that most people thought was part of the show. There were even a few passers by that stop and watch us from the open garage door on Queen Street. There was nothing I could do. i was in shock. That pun was intended. So needless to say from that point on, at that certain bar, our experimental and improvisational nights had to be capped by midnight, just so we could keep music hater happy. Some people just can't take the sounds of metal on metal. Go figure. Click here for the sunflower of deaths beautyful sounds.

Above the Vornado and a sunflower

Girasol Del Muerte

My very first instrument. It brings a tear to my eye just looking at it. Ok seriously, this really was the first instrument I ever built, but it was not originally designed as an instrument. It was suppose to be more of an intercom system for me when traveling around in my space ship. It was one mid summers evening, Jennifer and I were sitting around our apartment being our usual goofy selves when I noticed that across Queen Street the cops had pulled some fellow over. Jen has always compared me to an old lady the way I run to the window whenever something interesting is going on out side. I can't really say that she is wrong either. Any who, as I was watching the cops approached the gentleman's car I got the idea to hook the fan grate intercom up to my stereo and see if we could hear just what was going on. To both our amazement, the fan grate intercom ( the name Girasol Del Muerte did not come until much later) had pierced through the hustling and bustling noise of Queen Street, and we could hear every word the police spoke. Crazy man. Crazy.
It was until after they left that I ran outside and across Queen Street to the scene of the crime. In my red and white checkered and striped pajama pants that actually look pink to anybody with eyes, a grey ratty old tank top, and nothing on my feet but the skin god gave me. I stood there , yelling at first, but gradually lowering my voice as Jen stood in our window giving me the thumbs up after time. To anybody that lives in this wonderful neighborhood called Parkdale the sight of a crazy bearded bare foot man in pink pants and a wife beater is not really that uncommon. Basically it was more to me than just the night I built my first experimental instrument, but it was also the night that I truly became a Parkdalien. Here comes those tears again. If you want to hear some of these sounds click here and go to Black Iner. Be warned, this is an old web site. Some audio may be offensive to your ears. Or you can click here to just hear the sunflower of death.

Iner Playing The Sunflower Of Death

If you want to hear the Sunflower of Death just click here.
photo by jennifer schmitt

The Vornado

photo by iner souster
The Vornado was one of my many fan grate instruments I built a few years ago. Visually this is perhaps my favorite of the Sunflower of death series. The name came from an old Vornado fan that was given to me. You can see the name on the base of the stand. Along with that the instrument also consists of one of my old studio lamps, a steel salad bowl, a metal funnel. The stand is from my busted tripod. Inside there is a telephone receiver, which is great when you yell into the center opening of the fan grate which is attached to a spring. There are also four stings running on the outside from the bulbous body to the tines on the grate. Not only are the tines and springs playable but you can flip the Vornado around and use the body as a hand drum. That's it.

Here I am putting the final touches on the Vornado. The photo was taken by Jen. If you notice the background you can vaguely see what looks like the interior of a spaceship. If you are at all interested in more of this go to http://spaceiner.blogspot.com/

Bird Bath Of Ill Repute

photo by iner souster

Old Biker Jacket Drum Kit

This instrument was first built for Michael Keith to play at a show we did some years ago. The photo was taken at the in the Joseph D. Carrier art gallery. There is also some news footage out there of me playing this godforsaken instrument. It was made up of some light fixtures along with old pots and pans. All the skins were made from my old biker jacket. I thought to myself the eighties were twenty years ago are you really going to ever where that thing again. Before I could answer I had already cut the thing to pieces. Unfortunately it sounded terrible, there are no two ways about it, but a least I got rid of the jacket. All they different components have since been reintegrated into other more functional instruments. The first person that can tell me what they all are gets a special surprise.
photo by iner souster

Rain Machine

Don’t even say it. The rain machine was a direct result of teaching a bunch of kids how to build instrument from garbage and household products I did a couple of years ago for the Toronto Public Library. Some of those kids are mad geniuses. That is all I want to say about that.