Our Musical Instruments

The original musical arrangements on this site draw on a limited palette of sythesized instruments. It is mainly based on percussion instruments from the new world but that is augmented by the harp, ocarina and the mega moog in some arrangements. We havealso used the Bali Gamelan Orchestra to a number of our Ragtime pieces.

Interestingly the history of the marimba can be traced back round the world across the Atlantic to West Africa and then to the other side of Africa across the Indian Ocean all the way to Indonesia. So the recent addition of the gamelan to our palette is less surprising than it might seem at first sight.

Steel Drums	Marimbas
Vibraphones	Harps
Ocarinas	Gamelan Orchestra

Combinations and Permutations:

This palette of instruments is assembled on a sound stage typically with contrasting instruments on the left and right and bass drums near the centre. The marimbas often take the bass (left hand) parts while the steel drums and vibes take on the right hand parts. The mega moog is our other regular bass player but it can have a wider range.

Surprisingly the steel drums are often able to stand in for violins whose contribution in orchestral pieces is often more percussive than you might expect. Some times the steel drums have been given more legato by a Talking Steel sythesizer.

The Harp obviously has a special place in the palette and the sythesized version is more than a match for the other istruments it mixes with here. The Ocarina stands in for a variety of wind instruments in a number of orchestral pieces and notably in a couple of Clarinet Concertos - it's pure cheerful sound contrbutes to the playful nature of some of our recordings.

Occasionally other instruments have crept into our arrangements. These include asinging sythesizer, a jazz drum kit, pacarinas, wood blocks and marimba sequences.

These instruments are synthesized on a digital Moog emulator, Luxonix sythesizers, Native Instruments Gamelan and a dedicated Harp emulator.