Tinkertunes : Lithophones

Lithophones

Another happy coincidence led me to my current fascination with constructing lithophones. I was tossing around some scrap pieces of granite countertop that I’d gotten for one of my Upright Furniture projects, and as one of the chunks landed, it rang as clear as a bell.

I’d been looking for stone suitable for building lithophones for a while, but never suspected I would find a source of such readily available and inexpensive material.

Litho is Greek for stone, and phone is sound, so a lithophone is a musical instrument made from stone. They are one of the most ancient instruments, and in China the sound of stone is as elemental as metal or wood. Western civilization didn’t use stone for music until the 1840’s. There are links to some great sources of information about lithophones at the bottom of this page.

One of my first lithophones, and still my favorite, is made of chunks of Indiana limestone from my local stonecutter’s scrap pile. I didn’t tune this set at all… I just kept tapping pieces until I had my octave. Here’s an appropriate tune:

This next video demonstrates three more instruments. The first is a two and a half octave chromatic “Tile-a-phone”... a lithophone made of strips cut from black granite floor tile that I bought at Odom’s, my local building materials recycler. The second lithophone is an eleven note diatonic set made from bars cut from scap granite countertop, and weighs about 55 pounds. Finally a quick demo of one of my “toolbox glockenspiels” made from wrenches and bolts.

Here are links to some great sites with lots of information and history about “Rock Music”.