Album Notes

This CD comes out of my 18 years as director of Experimental Musical Instruments, an organization devoted to new and unusual musical instruments of all kinds. In conjunction with Ellipsis Arts, we produced the very successful book/CD compilation "Gravikords, Whirlies & Pyrophones" and its follow-up "Orbitones, Spoon Harps & Bellowphones." These feature the music of innovative instrument designers from around the world. My book Musical Instrument Design is regarded as the leading how-to book on creative, non-traditonal instrument making. We've put out a number of other books and CDs as well, both independently and with other publishers, including more specialized how-to books, and CDs covering a great diversity of new instruments.

With the new CD "Instrumentarium Hopkinis" I've turned the focus, for the first time, to my own instruments and the music they make. The music on the CD ranges from raunchy to decorous and from crazy-happy to contemplative. A huge number of instruments appear - far too many to list here, but they're all described in 16 pages of liner notes. They include the infamous Savart's wheel, the bird-like branching corrugaphone, the worrisome scraper flutes, the magical Polly, the melancholical musical siren, the wobbly bentwood chalumeau, the glittering disorderly tumbling forth, and many, many more ... all very different from one another, and representing every imaginable class of noise-maker. That includes winds, strings, idiophones and uncategorizables.

Some tracks to check out on Instrumentarium Hopkinis:
For raunchy or edgy: try #18, "Baby Please Don't Go"
For lovely and meditative: try #2, "Branching" or #6, "It Starts to Rain"
For a classic R&B cover played on weird instruments: try #21, "Use Me"
For silliness: try #5,"Embert, Rumel & Frumentus"
For a feeling of other lands, try #13, "Cheshire Grin" or #15, "Ping"

Have a good listen! Thanks for lending your ears.