MyInstruments

Here I would like to present my didgeridoo instrumentarium. I believe it can be useful and inspiring, it can bring you some idea and give you an insight of what my didgeridoo world looks like. I am not in illusion that everything I do is „right“, so maybe you can also learn on my mistakes. Everything here is my vision of the matter. I expect from you to make your own truth, as with anything. If it is similar to mine or not is not really important.

If there is anything more you would like to know, drop me a comment or e-mail.

Thank you.

In short; to see the instruments I use, make, explore and contemplate, go to my Duende Didgeridoo website and you will find many  many MANY words, pictures and sounds of our beloved tubes…

The C Didgeridoo

This is The One.  Also called The Stinkyroom didge. I play it also on Lake of Awareness, Point of Line, The Spatialist.  2 meters. Hornbeam.
In the time I made this didgeridoo,  it was a real gift. Honestly, I did not know how to make didgeridoo this good.  What I liked then and what I still like is how everything important is in balance in this didge.  It has strong „kick“- the push from the diaphragm – like in the beginning of  „Stinkirum“. It is strong in mid freqs making it very articulate, good for cascading faster parts. It has nice toots. C- G#-D,  these G# and D are a bit over. You can hear them quite nicely in the beginning of the song here.It has a very nice „fat“ sound.  Juicy and with character. Reacts to everything. Very well balanced back-pressure. Very nice small and percussive sounds like for Lake of Awareness

The  lower outside has the „muscle“ part which quite well resembles the sound in a way. I used to try my songs on this one, it was like a reference point for me.  This didgeridoo had many successors…  Moytze,  Zmayek,  Snake Spirals,  Little Yewel…

This tube was the best teacher I ever had.

G# didgeridoo

mandala-didgThis is an old bloodwood didgeridoo from Melle (Amsterdam).  It stayed in the shop for 8 years before i bought it. Seemed to be uninteresting. It was one of very few I (professionally) played that I did not make myself. I used play 3 songs on it; Mandala, Koridoro del Sono and Misao iz Daleka. About 180cm long, maybe 183cm. D A# E

This one has a very nice round sound, clear because it is quite cylindrical and quite hard wood. Good for soft smooth playing… Toots are also smooth,  thin and  far apart – so I chose the songs for it also bearing this in mind . The didgeridoo often lacks acoustical power when played acoustically. The „push“ can be obtained in the recordings or live, but it is much more of player’s push, and less of the instruments so it gives the kick a different quality of body.

Iglica – The Needle

needle-stickThere was an agave stick so tiny and slick that it would surely be overlooked by a didgeridoo hunting man or woman who knows what she or he is doing. Fortunately, I did not know what I was doing, so I took it home. And as it is usually not the case it was on a surgery desk for making didgeridoo quite soon.
Now all the doctors in my head gathered, scratched their beard and murmured… What could this be… how to make a didgeridoo out of this? We played a lot of long sticks, but never so tiny as this…
And as presence and practice were the best teachers available, ever, at all times, there was a revealing and astonishing first blow. There was a very natural feeling of much greater resonance than one would expect from this little long stick. And the easy silky toots…
It is a 235cm long didgeridoo in F#. The first 8 toots of it are: A#, F#, C, E, G, A#, C#, E. It is nice to play acoustically, BUT where it really shines through are its amazing dances in front of a microphone. Yes, dances is a good word, this didgeridoo taught me a lot about various microphone usages and new possibilities of didgeridoo sound. It was first played on Korvo Eksaltiko, and it was really a revealing experience. I believe this didgeridoo, called The Needle didge because of its appearance, has strong place in didgeridoo spectrum.
In short, it has very very nice bass which is deep and can be articulated well. It has enormous crazibilites of toots. The timbre is special and nice, non obtrusive, but powerful. It has smaller dynamic range which suits close miking better. The instrument is dynamically inert in the best sense of it. It can go, but only when you press acceleration pedal hard. There is no way to hurt yourself, microphone, or somebody in the audience accidentally. And it is still in the size that can fit in most places.
I tried to make a copy of it for traveling, but I missed one toot a bit. You could say no big deal, but it puts me to minor scale instead of major, so it can be a big deal, or it can be not, depending on what you want. But I realized many things from and about this instrument, and it will be found in the stories to come…
The point of this little story lies in the fact that something completely new cannot be in something already well known. Things come in their forms unexpectedly, and they do ask for some attention to be discovered….

Iglica was later followed by Iglica II which was a copy made in hardwood, Black Locust to be more precise. The Locust one has more mids and more freqs in the toots. I still use it for playing practice and playing with Ur and his crazy guitar mutant. This one has even nicer toots than Iglica I, less bass, more mids. Maybe slightly less volume, 1dB or so. You can hear it in solo action on Airvault festival.

Present time…

Black B

This is a replacement for the Stinkyroom didgeridoo, which is now present Stinkyroom didgeridoo for some 2 years or so… It is a bit more open and bit more in low mids, than white C didge…  It is a bit difficult to find the words to describe the difference between the two, even though it is not so little. Relatively speaking. I use this didgeridoo now also with Druyd and this is the only video of it that I’ve found… Druyd live in Ptuj…

Extreme Dream E

The EDE was my first step towards higher keys in my more recent didgeridoo development.  I used it for songs like this. I liked it mostly because of really nice toot intervals and possibilities of articulation. More about EDE you can find at Duende website…

The Spirit

The Spirit is one didgeridoo that also made strong impact on my didgeridoo making.  I would say it is the second  most powerful( in sense of rich loudness) didgeridoo I ever made. The  most powerful is in the way of The Spirit, only  bigger and half a note lower. The Spirit is in Eb. It is inspired by a “superdidge” made by Frank Thill which is now in ownership of Ondrej Smeykal and is his official “superdidge”. The Spirit is usually very much liked by all who try it. It is super easy to play, having really strong drone and really easy toots.  For example on a good day I can play 7th toot on The Spirit with circular breathing and articulations. So it gives you an extra boost in possibilities and impression of power you can achieve. It is not a very long didgeridoo, around 185cm, so everything is in one nice super tight package. The Spirit is still not on Duende website so I will offer you an acoustic presentation from the Live album of Kloster Dornach. Listen to the first song of second part, pi.14

Iglica III – The Needle III

Needles to say this is my most used instrument in the years 2010/11/12 so far… however nobody really likes it… it is not loud… for many players it is difficult to play… it is not attractive in looks and I have never sold one of those.  However many people have tried to build it. Maybe even You are one of them! However, they were always quite different from I-III. The biggest however is that I have been making a living and exploration in sound and technique, recorded whole album on this one slick stick. There are improvements to be done, but they are not easy to balance as in this kinds of air column things tend to be subtle. Oh yes, the overtones of Iglica III tend to go in major scale while I and II tend towards minor scale so they have kind of a different feeling especially when put with other instruments. Some info that doesn’t do justice to it can be found at Duende website. Long live IGLICA III!!!

The next generation…

At the moment of writing this text I am exploring something new in my didgeridoo world. This is not very unusual as I am always exploring something new in my didgeridoo world. This time I am exploring very very very extremely ultimately hard wood… with some new logic that I have found for shapes… one that helps me create… i dare say new sounds…  with new strength in texture…  new level of harmonics… and new dimension of presence.

However, I know this is more than anything my inner journey. I don’t know if anybody else enjoys this ride/sailing/flying or not… but if by any chance you do enjoy such realm of didgeridoos… stay tuned… and something will be revealed soon.