Trumbling Belly
The design
The design for the instrument is based on the protruded belly of the bird, Thrush. It is a small, midsized bird with rounded features with a short tail. There are different variant of shades but generally seen in the combination of greyish black and orange.
The reason to choose this bird as the structural reference is due to the importance of the bird in the poem. Its present during both the death and bird through its songs according to the narrator. They also have a unique and bold structure though they are tiny.
Thrush, The bird
I wanted to make it sound slightly chirpy which led me to the idea of using guitar strings. The idea was to make it slightly realistic among other experimental sounds. Another option was to mix different sharp sounding materials to but makes sound according to the rhythm of the movement of the performer.
The inspiration for the use of texture and material is from the work done by Rita Evans, Tuning in a Vacume and Coils of Days. Both works has used different materials and strings to produce sound such as terracotta rings and flexible metal sheets. Most of them have simple and clean shapes.
From Rita Evans Website
Reference:
Varied Thrush Identification, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology (no date). Available at: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Varied_Thrush/id (Accessed: 26 April 2024).
‘Recent Work – Rita Evans’ (2018), 13 September. Available at: https://ritaevans.com/ (Accessed: 14 June 2024).