This project presented a unique challenge to me. I first envisioned a Rube Goldberg machine, but then I worried about getting it properly set up in class. (In class, I watched as other students dealt with that problem.) Instead, I started thinking about the sound I wanted. Water glasses. Creating a machine to play the rims seemed too daunting, but surely I could come up with something to hit the glasses.
I should have asked for help immediately, because PVC pipe stuffed onto a cork "liquid nailed" onto a spinning motor the size of my pinkie nail was not going to work. I asked the opinion of a few family members, who happily pointed me to a hoarder's dream basement. I found a hot glue gun (my savior) and some weed-whacker line/rope/whatever that red plastic thing is and got to work.
Once the machine was spinning, everything fell into place.
The project was required to have five steps from origin to sound, and those five steps had to take up at least three feet. I decided to define my one "sound" as a combination of sounds, much in the way that arpeggiated notes may sounding at different times, yet they can create one chord. My weed-whacker chord was a foot long, giving the water glass circle a circumference of over three feet.
This assignment was technically demanding, and I assumed I had skills that I did not. In the theory vs. practice debate, I've tended in the past to do my best work on the theory side of the spectrum. I'd like to try to change that, and this project was a good start.
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