kroneckerdelta blues played on an, as yet, unidentified instrument - 5-strings, similar to a sarod, with a metal finger-board, no frets, and a skin head over a wooden-bowl body. but there are no sympathetic strings, the appearance is something like a seni-rabab (which has gut strings and a wooden finger-board. the original bridge was extremely high, indicating it might be bowed, but it's not rebab-shaped, and that would be difficult. the other possibility is that it was fingered only near the nut; it seems to go out of tune otherwise. so i whittled down a chinese bamboo bridge, which i shimmed up; this works a bit better, but only a bit. i found it less difficult to play fretless than i thought it would be; on the other hand, the strings are close together and that makes for a somewhat ragged style. i use nails, sometimes with a sitar pick as well. because of the humidity, the skin is somewhat slack, and the sound is an odd combination of incredible resonance and 'thump.' i tuned the five strings c-g-f-c'c' - the last two double-coursed like a saz. the first five pieces use the instrument; the last uses the cura cumbus, which is fretted. the overall impression is manic and strange and hopefully of interest. (the kronecker delta is a 0/1 operator in quantum mechanics.) http://www.alansondheim.org/kroneckerdelta1.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/kroneckerdelta2.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/kroneckerdelta3.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/kroneckerdelta4.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/kroneckerdelta5.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/kroneckerdelta6.mp3 _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
