dreams

Hello - Gemma here first. One day while scrolling the algorithms I came across this incredible woman playing this otherworldly instrument making cosmic sounds. I could only find a small clip of what it was, and had to know more!

After swimming through the swamp of the internet, I managed to find out her name was Constance Demby, and she had created this wonderful instrument called the SPACE BASS.

Here are some interesting links about her.

• Podcast about Constance Demby.
• Constance Demby plays the Sonic Steel Space Bass
• Constant Demby SONIC IMMERSIONS. Album by CD playing Space Bass to the 7 chakras. 

I thought - wouldn’t it be cool to make one of these. I was so enchanted by the sound of it!  

I had no idea how to do it, so needed to collaborate. I remember seeing Nicolas Woollaston playing his homemade instruments and wondered if he would be keen to help. Nick has a very DIY, practical, and open approach to making instruments. He is very collaborative in the way he works, so it has been a great experience working with him.

ideas

Hello, Nicolas here ... Gemma came to me with this wonderful concept - we looked at what we could find online of Contance's Space Bass and thought about how we could build something modelled after that. I did some thinking and some sketching ...

experiments

To try out the planned clamping method to hold the tines, Nicolas made a short section of the steel sound bar, with a couple of tines, curving around to bolt onto a piece of thin sheet steel as a soundboard. We hung this up in Gemma's garage from the rafters with some twine and had a go at playing it.

What we learned is that the tine clamping method works well and the 6mm steel rods sound good and the 90mm spacing between the tines is fine. The mild steel tines don't bow well due to surface rust, so we will need to use stainless. And the galvanised steel soundboard is difficult to get sounding with the rubber balls, again stainless looks like the way to go. And for the soundboard we should go with the thinnest steel that isn't totally fragile.

the growing

Materials used:

• 1x standard 304 stainless steel 0.5mm sheet 1220 x 2440
• 6m (approx) of 6mm stainless steel round
• 2m of 25x5mm mild steel bar
• 2m of 25x3mm mild steel angle section
• 200mm of 25x3mm mild steel bar
• 400mm of 2.5mm mild steel wire
• 26x 40mm M6 bolts
• 4x 25mm M8 bolts with nuts
• 6x 10x4.8mm pop rivets
• 2x heavy duty cymbal stands

Making the sound bar to hold the tines

Tines are spaced every 91mm, with the clamping bolts 20mm apart around each tine.

The first job was to drill 5mm holes at 45° through the corner of the 25x3 steel angle section. 26 holes at spacings of 20mm, 71mm, 20mm, 71mm, etc symmetrically in an overall length of 1340mm of angle section (ie 115mm clear at either end). Drilling on this angle is not easy and the breakthrough is very hard on the bits, a drill bit or two gave their life for the cause. I drilled them all at 3mm first then drilled them out to 5mm.

Then I aligned and clamped this to the 25x5 bar and drill 26x aligned 5mm holes in that bar. 2000mm of bar with about 445mm clear at either end.

Then I separated the two bars, drilled out the holes in the angle section to 6mm, and tapped the holes in the bar to M6.

Finally i took the bar, drilled an 8mm hole about 30mm in from either end and using the curve from the experimental mockup, bent the ends into the curves to hold the sound board.

Attaching the soundboard

The soundboard is a full sheet of stainless. The soundbar attaches to it 400mm down from the top and 45mm in from the edge. I drilled and pop riveted to attach two short pieces of flat bar (2x 100mm of 25x3 mild steel) vertically on the outside to spread the load, in the middle of each of these i drilled an 8mm hole.

Then the two of us worked together to bend the sheet around in a curve so that 8mm bolts can attach the two edges of the soundboard to the two ends of the soundbar. This tension helps it to sound great.

Finally an extra pop rivet at each end, 60mm in from the 8mm bolt holds the soundbar from twisting relative to the soundboard. These two pop rivets may be insufficient in the long run so the plan is to drill them out and replace them with an 8mm bolt if they ever start to come loose.

Adding the tines

6mm steel rod tines seem to sound great at lengths of around 250-300mm. We need a bit more steel than that to allow for ~35mm in the clamp on the soundbar. And the tines extending down below the soundbar also provides another resonant which we might be able to use to get a fuller sound.

If we want to try and tune the instrument chromatically, we would want each tine to be 6% longer than its neighbour as we go down the scale. Like a kalimba we arrange the longest tines in the middle and the shorter ones to the left and right.

We have cut approx 6m of rod into 13 tines ranging in length from about 250mm to about 650mm. For strings the difference in length from one (chromatic) note to the next is about 6% so we aim for similar with the tines.

Sliding them into the soundbar and tightening the bolts to hold them in place is straightforward. The bolts can be easily loosened slightly to adjust the tuning. Making some additional tines in the future and adjusting the tuning of the instrument is simple with this arrangement.

Take care to not over-tighten the bolts. The torque on all the bolts needs to be as even as possible, tight enough to hold the tines in place, but no tighter.

Making the support brackets

The whole thing needs to hang from two heavy duty cymbal stands in a free-floating way in order to sound good. The balance point is about halfway between the soundbar and the soundboard, so i made a pair of brackets to bolt onto the soundbar and extend 250mm behind it, with multiple holes drilled so we can adjust for the best balance point which is approximately 200mm.

The first attempt with some flat bar flexed too much and can't support the weight reliably. So the two brackets are made with 25x3mm angle section. With a 45o bend reinforced with a welded fillet. My welding is pretty rough, but it works. These are attached to the soundbar angle section between tines with 8mm bolts with nylock nuts, since they will be a nuisance to get to if we ever need to retighten them.

The brackets (and hence the whole instrument) hang from the cymbal stands by hooks made from bent wire which can be unhooked easily enough when required but seem pretty secure once set up.

the getting to know

Investigating the sounds we can get out of it in different ways is so much fun. Wonderfully atmospheric. The tuning of the tines is an interesting thing, bowing at different points along their length yields a wide variety of notes. The steel sheet has a sound all its own and can be played in all kinds of ways.

Tools used to play:

• bow
• fine toothed file
• wooden sticks
• felt mallet
• steel rod
• rubber ball
• chain
• bb pellets
• muehlenbeckia branches

We have been playing the Space Bass as a duo with one person on the side with the tines and the other on the side of the stainless steel sheet.

This is one of the first recordings we did exploring the different sounds and tools.

heading out into the world, gig at Space Academy

We had a gig lined up at Space Academy to play it for its first outing. Party of Special Things To Do is curated by Reuben Derrick, and has become an institution for Ōtautahi improvisers.

Space Academy is only a few blocks away, we reflected on whether it would be best to give it a ride in a van, on a trailer, or roof rack. After getting it all together we realised that it is both quite big and heavy, and also quite floppy and fragile. Moving it in and out of the garage where it was born takes two people and quite a lot of care. For us, a trailer worked best. We made a supportive stretcher for it with upstands to provide support and prevent it from falling over. It has an alarming tendency to catch the wind and blow over, so we used rope and other supports to tie it to the trailer.

And finally, the performance!

The latest video at time of publishing

The Artists

Nicolas Woollaston

I am a multidisciplinary artist of mixed Chinese and European descent, born in Ōtautahi, raised in Golden Bay and Nelson, now based in Ōtautahi once again. My interests lie in collaborative, interactive and improvised works where the final form arises from the dialogue between artists and/or audience. I like to work in the intersection between sculpture and performance.