Old Man Modular

Rediscovering an Ancient Instrument

I recently learned of a peculiar instrument born in the Middle Ages called a hurdy gurdy. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's perhaps best conceived as a viola with a hand-cranked wheel that is used to excite its strings, producing a tense, persistent drone. A set of levers or buttons control a melody on one or more dedicated strings called "chanterelles." The sound created by this incredible device is comparable to a bagpipe fused with a viol da gamba. Its workings are best explained by a pro as in the video below:

Patty Gurdy makes some exceptional videos about the hurdy gurdy, and is part of a pretty neat metal band besides. Given that she has the most tricked out hurdy gurdy the world has ever known, and given her special expertise with the instrument, the music featured in her videos is not often representative of the typical hurdy gurdy sound, which has a distinct Ren-Faire flair, and often tracking towards pirate music, such as is heard in Bear McCreary's incredible score for the television series Black Sails.

It's interesting that such a complex instrument comes out of the 11th century and was a not-uncommon folk instrument for hundreds of years in various forms across Central and Eastern Europe through the Renaissance. To produce a hurdy gurdy requires a fairly high degree of craftsmanship that I'd have not thought within reach of the average Teutonic serf. Today, a professionally built fully featured hurdy gurdy costs roughly the same amount as a down payment on a new car, give or take, though if you like to play eBay Roulette, you can find much cheaper ones.

Send in the Drones

And while I dig Medieval and Renaissance music, I'm not sure if it it fits in with my oeuvre. That said, there's something rather interesting about the sound of this instrument that might lend it to the sort of experimental/drone/dark ambient genre as well. Phill Niblock's piece Hurdy Hurry (left), crystallizes this idea splendidly, subtly evolving the interplay of the various strings over the course of fifteen minutes. Like most drone music, it's something of a niche sound, sure. It is a little reminiscent of Gyorgi Ligeti's Atmospheres in the way it transforms an acoustic sound to something otherworldly.

Reinventing the Wheel (and Soundboard, Chanter Lifter, Trompette, Etcetera)

A strange idea took root while researching this music-making machine. What if I were to build one? I don't mean one of these carefully crafted works of art and meticulous Renaissance recreations. What about creating something hurdy-gurdy-ish? Something that included some of the elements of a hurdy gurdy, but responded to voltage control, such as from a modular synth system, or some other kind of controller. The wheel could be driven with motors, and an array of servos could control the chanter lifters. The resulting contraption might not look much like a hurdy gurdy (nor even sound like one), but I think the idea still has some merit, at least insofar as it presents some interesting challenges. I think I'd like to call it a "nerdy gurdy." Over the next few weeks I'll try to sketch up some ideas and evaluate the feasibility. Stay tuned.