Overview and future:
Working with a large stone instrument is incredibly challenging, everything I have ever considered fundamental about music making has been questioned during this project.
It is still not possible to tune a stone to a specific scale and this made the compositional process complicated. Without fully realising it at the time, this was probably one of the
reasons I was so drawn to it. From the first time I saw Hannes's film 'a brief history about sound and stone', I had been captivated by these strange microtonal stone sculptures.
For a long time, I had wanted to write music inspired by György Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna and Fernando Corona's Oort but had lacked the knowledge and skills to do so. Working with Hannes and his stones allowed me to explore the world of microtonal music and conduct my own research.
When I started this project over twelve months ago, my only experience of working with sound stones was a weekend in late July 2016, when I visited Hannes at his Stuttgart studio. One year on and I have successfully designed and built my own stone, researched and created a virtual version, written a number of musical compositions, using both real and virtual stones. I have introduced the instrument into the UK by holding an event at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park's 40th- anniversary weekend. The press and promotions for this event combined with the Yorkshire Evening Post's 'real rock music' article reached over 300,000 people. I have also managed to secure the permanent loan of two sound
stones to Huddersfield University for the continued research and development of the instrument.
To have designed and built my own stone gave me a wonderful opportunity to see the whole process from start to finish. It was a steep learning curve with a lot of challenges.
This experience has definitely enriched my musical practice and given me a number of new areas of research. Discoveries like Harry Partch and Hugh Davies have left me with
a real spirit of musical adventure. My virtual sound stone will continue to be developed and will give me the opportunity to write and record some new material. After a recent research trip to the Lake District, I have been in discussions with Hannes about the possibility of building a sound stone here in the UK.