Twigstrument

The Twigstrument is an electro-acoustic musical instrument which develops an existing instrument, the Earth Block Instrument by sound artist Michael Ridge, with his permission. Ridge's instrument models the combination of a metal earth block attached to a box, which has a contact microphone attached to the inside of it. Twigs, feathers, skewers and other items small enough to be secured to the box through the holes of the earth block and are screwed into place. In this way they become stable enough to be bowed and the vibrations created by this are picked up by the contact microphone. In Ridge's instrument, this signal is run through guitar pedals to add effects to the sound. The Twigstrument evolves Ridge's design to embed a Bela Mini nanocomputer, 5V power supply and a Bela Trill touch control into the instrument. The Bela Mini can be programmed using Pure Data so that effects can be produced within the instrument itself. The Bela Trill allows for the instrument to be muted/unmuted (particularly useful for suppressing handling noise while picking the instrument up and putting it down), volume to be adjusted, and volume and mute settings reset. The latest addition to the Twigstrument is a pair of LEDs, which allow the player to see the mute state of the instrument and confirm when the reset has been triggered. All these adjustments render the Twigstrument far more portable than Ridge's original Earth Block Instrument, allowing the performer to move about and be able to control the instrument's sound without needing to be in the physical location of guitar pedals. When paired with a portable amp that can be attached to the performer's body, the instrument becomes completely mobile. The use of the Bela Mini allows for full customisation of effects using PureData, or any of the other languages supported by the device. The Trill Bar gives access to settings in the software while performing.

Currently, the instrument is a performance-ready prototype. It was tested in an early version in a drone orchestra performance by Fourth Portal in Gravesend on 31 August 2024, and the latest version of the prototype will be used in forthcoming performances of Bastard Assignments' PIGSPIGSPIGS (premiering at Borealis Festival in Bergen on 15 March 2025), but the instrument is still in development. Only one effect has been implemented so far - reverb (based on an effect patch by Pierre Massat made freely available by him on his blog, 'GuitarExtended') - and the parameters of that effect are currently preset in the software, with only the simple controls mentioned being accessible through the Trill Bar.