An Ancient and Distinguished Instrument

I came across a Yahoo group yesterday that I thought might be of interest (Novelty Music), and this morning heard back from founder member Paul Moore. Paul has a one-man-band and plays the 'Zob Stick' which, upon further investigation, turns out the be one of many names for what we know as the Yobstick.

Whilst I have heard of others playing similar stick-based instruments every so often, I had never heard of the name. I suspect the name 'Yobstick' may just be due to a mispronunciation of 'Zob Stick', but the instrument has also been called the 'Monkey Stick', 'Lagerphone', 'Freedom Boot' and many other names from around the world. In fact it has a history going back to asian shamans, and possibly beyond, where it was used as a symbol of power. I've stuck some more details about this up on the Deserters site, along with links to some related sites.

For me the most interesting of these is The Groanbox Boys - a London band who I had already heard about in the last couple of days as they just happen to feature Michael Ward-Bergman. He plays some superb accordian (yes, perhaps it seems like a contradiction of terms, but it is really VERY good) on Judge Smith's album, "The Full English".

Got me dem ole Yobstick Blues

Okay, so I saw my favourite Yobstick builder at the weekend and have been mulling over various designs in the back of my head for most of the day. There's too much other stuff to be doing at the moment to do anything practical about it, but it's just one of several things floating around in my mind shouting at me "Hurry up and free some time so you can get on with me!" It hasn't helped that my morning read of Music Thing with my coffee led me off down a path to the very wonderful Oddmusic site, where there is a gallery including sound clips of dozens of ancient, ethnic and newly-invented musical instruments. Inspiration I surely didn't need.

There are 2 things I want to do with the next yobstick - one is to make it an electric yobstick. Not quite sure how practical that is, but it would be great to trigger samples with the welly end, or stick the string through a distortion and delay line. The other thing is to make the string more playable, i.e. instead of it being a single note I want to be able to play simple bass lines on it. Again, not terribly sure about how to do this, as one hand holds the stick and the other plucks the string - either some sort of tensioning lever (like a whammy bar) or a sliding bridge.

I just know I'm going to be dreaming about yobstick construction tonight.

Hmmmm.