Instruments described herein, as well as some others, may be seen, heard, and tried out by appointment.

Thinking Big

It's time to do something for an instrument that has been needlessly restricted in all its half-century of life: the Hawaiian or steel guitar. Most people think of it in rather demeaning terms - a cloying, monotonous major chord, and endless sliding to and fro. But it's NOT the instrument or its principle -- a sliding steel bar and mere painted lines instead of frets, and electronic amplification -- it's the trivial music played on it by people of little imagination.

Ivor Darreg has done something about it: the Megalyra, Kosmolyra, and Hobnailed Newel Post. These are larger instruments with more strings, strung on both sides of a long board, or all four sides of a fence-post.

The Kosmolyra is about 4 1/2 feet long, with from 40 to 45 strings tuned to different chords, on all its four sides, so that changing chords does not require any pedal mechanism, but just giving it a quarter- or -half-tone. More than one instrument may be laid on a floor or table, or stood erect, for an even greater variety of chords. The Hobnailed Newel Post has 64 strings, 16 on a side, with a great deal of sympathetic resonance through the redwood post. All chords are just on the four instruments so far made, and since the steel may be placed anywhere, just intonation is possible in any key -- at any pitch one pleases. (The strings could be tuned to tempered intervals, but no one hearing these instruments would want to!)

The Megalyra is an impressive solution to the bass and contrabass problem. Whether your musical tastes happen to be conventional or radically innovative, the bottom end of an orchestra or ensemble has usually left something to be desired. The double-bass is cumbersome and weak in tone compared to the rest of the orchestra -- and it does not go down to Contra C as the organ does, just to E. The electric bass used in popular idioms may be easier to manage, but usually has little brilliance. The Megalyra has really long strings on its 6- to 8-foot board. Square end-pieces permit standing it erect on either end or laying on any side. One side is strung with a solo tuning -- funamental, octave, twelfth, and double-octave -- two to five strings to each note, so up to 16 strings in all -- giving a chorus effect, as well as the pipe-organ's pedalboard effect of four pitch-levels at once. The long steel may be used, or wooden bars may be used to strike the strings, which gives a range of tones from clavichord to piano in quality, clearly articulated without sliding.

We are used to cello and bass playing in octaves, so the megalyra is arranged to do likewise. On the other side of the board are three groups of strings, again for chorus effect and that "rolling" sound, tuned to fundamental, fifth, and octave from Contra C, 33 Hz. This side is for playing the quieter accompanimental bass parts.

The usual 12-tone fret-lines are painted on the board for two octaves, so the musician may find his way about, but with a big difference: these lines go only one-third the way across. About 20 notes of a just (untempered) scale are represented by bright-colored fret-lines across the other two-thirds of the board's width. Red sharps, blue flats, white or black naturals depending on the ground color of the instrument- 12-tone lines are green. Yellow lines all the way across indicate the nodes for high harmonics, which these long strings ring out unbelievably! Four Megalyra instruments have been built in different colors so far -- stood erect they look like Kandinsky or Mondrian Totem-Poles in cages. The two sets of pickups are hand-wound.