A feedback string resonator that can take external inputs and create sounds ranging from subtle sympathetic resonances to complex feedback. I am recording an album of collaborations with this instrument with support from the Canada Council for the Arts for release in 2026
The instrument consists of a transducer, strings, pickups, and custom circuitry I designed consisting of amplfiers, filters, distortion, and a PT2399 based delay that can swap between serial and parallel processing.
In 2017 I participated in a residency at the Banff Centre. During this time I made field recordings from around the area and experimented with making instruments out of ice. These instruments involved freezing sheets and resonant chambers to strike and to attach strings to. The most successful of these instruments was an ‘ice cello’ which was made using a cello string and a hollow ice block. It sounds like grinding ice and whale song.
I shaped the sounds of this instrument and the field recordings from Banff into a track called Winter Music. This track is designed to be improvised with and has been performed by several people and groups in the years since. India Gailey released a version on their debut album Lucid available here. The ice cello is most prominent in the final section of the piece.