The Bell Bottom

I had the pleasure of visiting Ken Butler's studio in Greenpointe and hearing him perform some of his bricolage instruments. His exploration of sound is simple yet pushed to the most amazing degree. Everything produces sound, and it is us, the player, who inflicts rhythm upon it to create music. And with piezo contact microphones, the layers and potency of that sonic excavation becomes limitless. 

The bell bottom was an instrument I built out of scrap. I used four guitar strings bridging over a cowbell. While a piezo mic is used in the chamber of the cowbell, the instrument is fully acoustic and comes out sounding like a tin banjo. By striking the base of the strings the cowbell's signature donk can be heard while a spring in the chamber can be twanged. With the contact mic plugged into an amp, the sound becomes more metallic and more bouncy, like darts thrown at a shed door.