Glockboard

Portable glockenspiel made from a discarded toy piano

The Glockboard is among the instrument we created for our LP called Vis-à-Vis which saw us travel across Central Asia, connecting Geneva to Shanghai, with a set of portable handmade instruments.

The idea for the instrument started from a compositional perspective: we wanted to use a toy piano in a way where a percussionist could strike the tines while a pianist could play the keys.

The result was a sort of “ghost” of the toy piano represented by samples on a MIDI-controller, with the struck tines removed and amplified using a contact microphone.

To show the location of the notes, small pieces of wood indicate the black keys on the board. More information on the instruments used in Vis-à-Vis can be found here.