My primary artistic activity has been focused around my installation the Long String Instrument, in which rosin-coated fingers brush across dozens of metallic strings, producing a chorus of minimal organ-like overtones which has been compared to the experience of standing inside an enormous grand piano. Chris Bohn, editor of The Wire, wrote of the Long String Instrument,

“Listening to it, you feel like you are inside some cyclopean subterranean grotto… its bejewelled walls glistening with an alien lustre (and) sounding like something that shimmers, iridescent shapes bend conventional pulse-based time and impose their own paradoxical temporality, where constant movement teems within a vast stasis.”

The string material and length are the only factors determining pitch in the longitudinal mode, not tension or gauge. The instrument is tensioned just under the breaking point however in order to maximize resonance. The composition of the metal effects the speed of the longitudinal wave through the wire; waves travel more slowly through dense materials and the slower the wave, the lower the frequency produced at any given length. Various metals and alloys change the timbral quality as well. Finer gauges produce less surface noise and output more pure tone when bowed because it takes less energy or pressure to get the string to speak. When I first started working with long wires I used steel piano wire. More recently I prefer stainless steel and because it is stronger than steel, I have been able to reduce the gauge from .0135 inch to .009 inch. Stainless steel has a muted quality that I find to be more “musical” than steel. I also work with phosphor bronze which gives an interval of about a fourth lower at an equal length with stainless steel. Bronze is a proven musical material, used on the sitar and tamboura; the overtone spectrum can be round and beautiful. I sometimes use brass string when working within the limitations of a particular room length. The same length of brass is about a minor second lower than bronze. Brass wire is harder to excite and lacks a full upper partial spectrum, but when played with other related pitches can give a bottom end to the sound.

With funding from the Center for Cultural Innovation in 2009, I worked with REM Design and Keith Carey to redesign the capos used to tune my instrument. For many years I used off-the-shelf c-clamps. I wanted something more compact and less likely to become entangled in adjacent strings while the instrument is being played. I had hoped to reduce the weight of the capo for the sake of traveling, but found the tone to be “fuzzy” at any less than 2.5 ounces, the weight of the one-inch standard c-clamp. My guess is that without a certain amount of weight the energy of the wave pushes through the capo. We found that a capo made of brass gave more body or weight to the coloration of the tone, a sound that I preferred. Experiencing this has made me keenly aware of musical resonance as a system where the design and consideration of every element in the instrument construction has an effect on the music. After testing about a dozen prototypes using different means to tension two plates of metal against the wire, a design was arrived at and put into production.

I have discovered an optimal bowing speed in which strings speaks most clearly in the longitudinal mode, presumably based on a relationship to the speed of the wave moving through the material, which in turn regulates the pace of the walking performer. As a performer I find that it takes time warming up to get in sync with this speed, anywhere from ten minutes to an hour. I really couldn’t pinpoint what exactly that speed is, however, I just know it when I hear it. Subjectively speaking, the difference in timbre that I hear is like moving from a sensation of jagged shards of glass sticking into my ears to feeling that the sound has plasticity and can be molded with my fingertips into undulating shapes like a string of beads.

I first experienced this roundness in timbre in the late 1990s while living in Seattle where I was surrounded by musicians–improvising musicians, musicians who practiced. I wondered, what would happen if I practiced too? My solution to the high cost of renting a large studio space in Seattle was to work full time as a graphic designer. This job left me with little mental energy for composing, so I decided to commit myself to just play every evening: to play maybe even one chord continuously. I should preface this with the fact that I came to Seattle after studying North Indian vocal music for four years with Anita Slawek in Austin, Texas. Over those years I had witnessed the resonance in my voice grow through a commitment to practice, even when I didn’t like how my voice sounded. Practicing on my instrument and with no tradition to follow, I discovered for myself a new sound.

In the late 1980s I conceived of a graphic notation format in which timing and coordination of parts are determined by distance walked. This system still functions as the basis for scoring my work today. Numbers placed on the floor under the suspended strings at metric intervals are used as reference points indicated in the score. Transitions can be coordinated based on the time it takes to arrive at predetermined locations, thereby “choreographing” repeatable events to occur at specific locations. My notation functions like a roadmap for the performer, aligning musical events in time and space to coincide with specific upper partial content. Strings vibrate in mathematical subdivisions of the total string length, simultaneously vibrating in multiple modes at once. The performer’s rosin-coated fingertips pass through these subdivisions or nodal points unfolding in a cascading spectrum, dampening the string and sounding partials associated with each passing location.

When measuring the waveform produced by the Long String Instrument using a spectrum analyzer, it can be seen that every upper partial of the fundamental tone is represented through the entire range of hearing. Just intonation, a natural tuning system generated off of the overtone series, lends itself to a contemplation of precise alignments of resultant relationships among the upper partial tones. In 2003 my precision in tuning took a giant leap forward when Jörg Hiller introduced me to Peterson strobe tuners, with precision to the tenth of a cent. (In equal temperament, a cent is one hundredth of a half-step) I admit I am unable to discern one thousandth of a half-step, but I am able to sense alignments of partials when playing a chord, and walking. When the tuning is really clean it is as if I am running a giant mechanically geared clock, each string like an individual gear of larger or smaller diameter, rotating at its own rate in relationship to the other gears in an overarching system that is aligned to eventually repeat.

My process of composing includes research of this instrument as an acoustic feedback system. I have observed that the upper partial spectrum of strings being played can be highly influenced through sympathetic resonances. With an introduction of a new tone into an existing chord, either from another instrument or played on the Long String Instrument, previously unheard partials can be triggered to sound, and continue to sound, even when the triggering tone is no longer playing. Like puffs of wind blowing at a candle flame, the instrument responds fluidly to manipulation, and then rights itself into a new alignment of overtone projection. After seeing the spectrum analysis of the Long String Instrument, this does seem possible; since there is every partial represented, there must be frequencies in common with any pitch, especially in the higher range of the spectrum where partials become closer and closer. I have the sense that my instrument is an open system, responsive to frequencies being played by other musicians and by the resonance of the room itself. When another musician’s sound reinforces my tuning I can even feel a buzzing energy driving my strings to sound using very little pressure from my fingertips. A dead room is very unflattering to the sound of my instrument; it puts out a piercingly ugly sawtooth-like wave, unlike, a cello, for example, which has a self-contained resonance and beauty of tone within its own body and a resonant room only enhances it.

From the beginning I have wanted to create a variety of techniques for the Long String Instrument to be played by ensemble. I have explored rhythmic techniques for many years but have not felt it to be successful until the box bow tool, which I designed on my DAAD residency in Berlin in 2001. The box bow, homage to the harmonica, is a hand held hollow wooden box made of Sitka spruce with a curved lower surface. Techniques based on hand drumming inform the articulations of the tool used to strike groupings of strings tuned to chords. My Memphis roots hold a strong influence on my musical taste and I have always wanted to play folk music. With the box bow I have satisfied this desire while exploring more abstract concepts at the same time. I found that I am able to even achieve the wind blown vowel-like vocalization of the harmonica when the three string groupings are tuned to fundamental, fifth and octave. Thus far I have defined nine distinct articulations with the tool represented by graphic icons in my notation. Various combinations of these articulations are used in repeated phrases and juxtaposed to form hocketed patterns. Two box bow performers stand facing each other to play at a double-sided resonator.

What began as a raw exploration of sound many years ago has evolved into an articulated and unique musical language that occupies a space that one enters in order to engage with through playing and listening. My music functions on multiple levels, existing as sound in space, or indeed, as sculpture. With my research I hope to illuminate the physical nature of sound and the geometry of harmonic space.