University Park, Pa. --- In his spare time, Penn State graduate student Ray Wakeland plays the banjo but he'll be on-the-job demonstrating the fire organ, daxophone and long string instrument to show what brings "Music to a Physicist's Ears" in Washington, D. C., today (Feb. 18).
Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, Wakeland will be part of a session on "Amateurs and Professionals: Advancing Science Together."
A doctoral candidate focusing on the study of thermoacoustic refrigeration, Wakeland was recruited for the demonstration by his thesis adviser, Dr. Robert Keolian, associate professor of acoustics and senior research associate at Penn State's Applied Research Laboratory. Wakeland says that preparing for the demonstration and studying how each instrument works have led him to discover interesting journal articles related to his doctoral research.
Wakeland's thesis research focuses on how sound can be used to pump heat. The fire organ uses heat to drive air oscillations that we perceive as musical sounds. Wakeland explains that the same type of oscillations can occur unintentionally during a rocket launch and cause the rocket to shake apart. Therefore, there's quite a bit of research on how to stop them, Wakeland notes. The fire organ, the only fire-driven type of instrument, puts the oscillations to musical use.
Wakeland studied French artist and performer Michel Moglia's fire organ. This instrument, made of more than 250 stainless steel pipes, is played with flaming torches. Wakeland demonstrates the instrument's operating principal using just a single glass tube and a blowtorch. He inserts a piece of wire screen about a quarter of the way into the tube and then heats the screen until it glows red hot. When the blowtorch is withdrawn, an organ-like musical tone emerges from the tube.
Moglia's performances are more a spectacle than a concert, Wakeland says. No commercial recordings of the fire organ are available. However, Moglia's website at perso.club-internet.fr/orguafeu/orguafeu.htm includes photos, background material and information.
Wakeland selected the instruments he will be demonstrating for their artistic appeal and because they are acoustically unlike conventional instruments. The daxophone, invented by Hans Reichel, however, at least looks a bit more like a conventional musical instrument than the others.
Essentially a stick, across which the player draws a violin bow, the daxophone is similar in some ways to a musical saw or the glass harmonica. The tone it produces, however, is a broad-spectrum sound rather than the clear tone produced by a musical saw. The daxophone is featured on a full-length CD, "Shanghaied on Tor Road: the world's first operetta performed on nothing but the daxophone" on the Free Music Production label. Reichel's web page is www.daxo.de/ . For text and video clips and links, go to www.shef.ac.uk/misc/rec/ps/efi/mreichel.html .
The third instrument, the Long String Instrument, is so large that Wakeland is unable to demonstrate it in the average size lecture hall and so he will show a video instead. Invented by Ellen Fullman, the instrument consists of a series of 100-foot long bronze harp-type strings hung like clothesline about waist high. Fullman's musical compositions often require two or three people to play the instrument. The players walk slowly along the length of the strings while lightly touching them with hands coated with rosin usually used on violin bows. The result is a shimmering, ethereal kind of music reminiscent of the sitar.
Wakeland says, "Because of the great size of the long string instrument, the players are actually inside it. The playing is also a kind of dance which has been compared to Tai Chi."
The Penn State researcher explains that the long string instrument operates by setting up longitudinal waves in the strings while standard instruments such as the violin, guitar or piano, use motion that is transverse to the length of the string. Standard string instruments also are tuned by tightening the strings while the long string instrument uses weights attached at various points on the strings.
Recordings of the long string instrument include "Body Music," from the Experimental Intermedia Foundation and "Change of Direction" on the New Albion Records label. The long string instrument website is at www.artcars.com/ LSL/ellenhome .
Wakeland has had a longstanding interest in music and says he thinks that most people who study acoustics receive their original inspiration from music. A doctoral candidate in acoustics at Penn State, he earned his undergraduate degree in physics at Oberlin College where he also sang in the choir, took Baroque recorder lessons and courses in electronic music. Originally from Muncie, Ind., Wakeland frequented the electronic music lab at Ball State University before he went away to college. He credits this early modern music exposure with kindling his interest in acoustics.
While he thinks learning about the unusual instruments was fun, Wakeland, a National Science Foundation Fellow, intends to continue his studies of thermoacoustics rather than pursue further study of the new musical instruments.
"There are exciting academic challenges for someone to study these instruments. The fire organ is even related to a phenomena that combustion engineers want to stop," he says. However, he's going to stick to his plan of becoming a professional acoustician and remaining an amateur banjo player.
EDITORS: Mr. Wakeland is at (814) 861-3799 or at wakeland@psu.edu by email. Photos of Wakeland demonstrating the daxophone and fire organ are available by calling Barbara Hale, (814) 865-9481.