Lyde Notation by Dan Senn

The Instruments

The instruments are called lydes (lyde is the Danish word for sound) and are simple pot lids stuck on pine doweling. Most of them are spun or cast aluminum and all are collected from garage sales and thrift stores. From the example of Tibetan bells and Ben Franklin's Glass Harmonium I knew that a continuous ring (hear) would result from turning along the edge of a bell, but it wasn't until I experienced a group headed by William Houck (Chico, CA) at Mills College (Oakland, CA) that I realized their aesthetic and educational potential. Unbreakable percussion instruments for my school residencies! Inexpensive, available, un-tunable instruments played best with inexpensive duct tape wound 'round a stick! When I returned to my studio, I dug out the few lids I already had, developed my own assembly methods, and within a few years had a growing collection. The notation presented here came from the early school workshops in Tacoma, and without any I Ching connection.

Depending the characteristics of the outer edge, a circular bell will provide a continuous ring if rubbed using the right speed and friction. For a mallet, duct tape on 1-1/4" diameter pine doweling or 1-1/4" PVC 7 inches long does best. As suggested by the notation, I attach my bells to 1-1/4" diameter pine dowels 5 inches long. These have a 1/4"-20 hanger bolt drilled into one end with a rubber washer is used to separate the bell from the handle. The bell is held snug with a small washer and a cap nut. Leather can be used to cover the 7" long mallet, but a few layers of smoothly layered duct tape will work best with additional layers better suited to larger lydes. To perform the lyde notation presented here, a mallet covered on one end and not the other is required. A suitable abrasive can be used to sand and smooth the outer rubbing edge of the lydes making them easier to play while diminishing surface noise. Smaller lydes are easier to play if a small washer separates the rubber washer from the bell itself.

The lydes are noteworthy because of their ability to ring continuously but their true richness lies in their mobility, the wide variety of percussive colors that are possible, and the fact that you must accept them for what they are, pot lids. You must accept the imposition of their pitch, and for this reason pitch is not a fixed parameter in the notation. Every lyde sounds excellently with every other lyde. There are no wrong notes. Depending on the acoustics of the playing space, the random combinations of overtones from one to many lydes will mix to buzz, gnaw and glisten in the most extraordinary ways. Folks who would otherwise find new and experimental music detestable will immediately, without hesitation, except these sounds as beautiful music and participate in developing new compositions as if their prejudices had never existed. Part of the reason for this, I believe, is that the lydes are familiar objects and easily anthropomorphized as, say, unwieldy and innocent children and, therefore, exempted from all that hard-to-reach new music. But experimental music it is and these instruments have great potential for opening the ears, minds and creativity of a many.