As we entered this room, we found it to not only be dark and mysterious, but quite clear of almost anything, except in some cases there were what looked like I couldn’t describe what. In the middle of the room was a microphone hanging down and I somewhat figured out that we must have been in the place where Nido recorded a lot of the music I’d heard earlier. There was a sound board, with some of the strange markings I’d not seen before, on the other side of a partition, between the recording room and it. It looked like every aspect of this room, was designated for ultimate sound quality. Each contour of the wall or the many microphones that must have been used for different purposes all seemed to contribute to the great clarity I’m sure Nido tried to achieve with his recordings. Kelly remarked how silent it sounded in here, and I hadn’t heard a clearer almost eerie silence in my life, it was perfectly designed. Even when Kelly spoke to me, I had never heard so much distinction or clarity in her voice. It was actually fascinating to talk myself, I began to notice things I had never even thought about before, and I was almost tempted to record myself, just to hear what I sounded like, in a more precise way, to others.
Going through the door to the other side of the partition where the soundboard was, I found what must have been a large array of instruments that Nido had created or taken from elsewhere. There were a few traditional instruments there as well, such as a couple of violins and harps, and bells and things of that nature. There were also stranger instruments like a series of bowls of different sizes lined up from end to end, like a sort of alternative Xylophone. I saw beneath the bowls that there were foot pedals, and I sat down at this instrument and took the mallets out that it had. As I sat there, I instinctively pressed the pedals, and suddenly the bowls were spinning, I began to play a short melody on this singular instrument and found the sound to be spooky and kind of hollow. When I finished playing, I looked at the side and there was written in English that this was a harmonium invented by Benjamin Franklin. I played a little more, and Kelly looked up at me quite bemused, asking what I’d found now. I told her that this one wasn’t Nido’s but rather Ben Franklin’s. I played a little ditty of ‘hot crossed buns’ for her, and when I finished she applauded and laughed at the absurdity of it all. Looking around, I started to discover some more of the instruments Nido had actually invented himself.
In the corner there was an instrument that looked like a trumpet, but was made of right triangles coming out of a convoluted tube of brass. I took it out, and tried to play, but found it didn’t quite work right, at least not straight away. After a little tampering with it, I put my mouth on it and blew and suddenly a nice note came out. One of the differences between this instrument and a real trumpet was that it seemed to have no buttons or valves to play with. It then occurred to me that maybe the triangles were the answer, because playing it now, they seemed more like handles. As I played, it a little more, I could subtle change any of the handles and I nearly sounded like a virtuoso on this geometric trumpet, though I’d never seen nor played any instrument like it before. I gave it to Kelly, and she too gave a wonderful performance. She played for a little while longer, and it occurred to me that this was like a strange mix between a trumpet and a trombone with a sound perhaps in the middle of these ranges so that it could play both treble and base clefs. Peaking around more, I found a few other instruments that looked like they came by Nido’s own invention.
I found another instrument, but this looked more like a mix between a clarinet and a flute. It was quite simple like a mere recorder, and along the side of it was a series of simple buttons, some marked in Nido’s language, and others in simple keys like G, E flat, D sharp and so on. I pressed one of those keys and suddenly I heard a small churning coming from within the instrument. As I put the instrument to my mouth a unique and interesting sound came out, but the diversity of pleasant noises was something surprising and happy to hear. The keys were surprisingly simple once I really started playing, and all of a sudden a terrific performance came out of me like I didn’t even really have to try to do it. I was almost proud, but realized that Nido must have designed this instrument to be deceptively good, it could make anyone seem like a master in seconds, simply by playing whatever came to mind. I then wondered what it would be like if Kelly and I played our two new instruments together, and asked her to join me in a duet. She agreed to this enthusiastically, but was a little confused about what we might play together, since neither of us really had any songs memorized. After a little searching in a file near the soundboard, I found some sheet music Nido had written at some point. I skimmed through until I found a nice duet for two instruments, but he never specified which. Mind you, I had taken a little music before, and had learned piano as a child, for a few years, but I was certainly rusty at what I was doing now.
I brought it out anyway, and with the simple pattern on my instrument thought I’d give it a try. The complexities of music never ceased to astound me, and I was no stranger to how very difficult music must be to actually perform, but when I sat down to play this with Kelly, I swear it was by far, the best thing I’d ever played, both in the production of it on Nido’s end, meaning the music worked really well for these two particular instruments, and on the quality end on our side. Kelly sounded simply amazing and together with me, and my happily simple instrument, we could have made the best of records. Stunned at our good luck in doing this, I simply sat there somewhat dumbfounded and smiling at what we had just produced. I then thought I’d try my hand at some of the more traditional instruments Nido had up, just kind of on a whim. I took down one of the violins on the wall, and feeling lucky and particularly talented from my not to recent amazing performance. I began to play and soon realized this must not have been an instrument Nido had designed, the sound was disgraceful and seemed to automatically undo all of the graceful and flowing music I’d just created. Kelly, in fact covered her ears, I think she too was expecting much more from me. I took out the other violin, thinking maybe this one would work more in my favor… it did sound better, but not much. I was now feeling a little sheepish and embarrassed about thinking I had any talent in this regard, but Kelly was encouraging and said to look around and see what else I might find. She in the meanwhile had taken the woodwind I had just been using.
Along the same wall, I found a very strange looking violin that barely resembled the shape of the original ones. There was hardly a body to the violin, and the neck was actually a little short, with the same simple markings of Nido’s language, basically just counting up from one to eight. It hadn’t struck me until this point, but I noticed now that the musical markings, rather than being in some kind of invention all Nido’s own, were actually the same as any common score of music, even the notes were the same. It all now made sense to me, because it must have been due to the fact that music is all based in eight. Nido had an obsession with that number I felt. This violin had the same markings, and I really wanted to play this one well, so looking through the sheet music where I’d found the duet for Kelly and I, I discovered many pieces for violin. Taking one of these out, I tried again, and due to both the markings on the music itself, and the markings on the instrument, I discovered that I could play this instrument as well as the other ones that Nido had clearly made himself. I felt like I could have played for a professional symphony with the sounds I was making. The particular piece I’d found was actually Sinbad and the Sea, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It was splendid, I wanted to play for several more hours, but I also wanted to find out, what sort of acoustic magic, Nido was capable of producing.
Kelly asked me for the violin and the sheet music, since she had seen that the combination had turned my putrid sounds of a few minutes earlier into the dulcet loveliness I had just completed playing. Giving these instruments to Kelly, I searched on through the small room of musical instruments I had discovered that Nido had created. There were more instruments than I would have thought, and I felt like Nido had one piece for every instrument in a regular orchestra, and another piece for every instrument of his own invented orchestra as well. It was exciting to search through these stacks and rows of them, and each of them seemed to be made as simple as possible to make the sweetest and most pleasing of sounds with. I checked through and found a very small instrument that looked a little bit like a harmonica, but with a more pronounced end to it. I put it to my mouth and heard a very loud sound for the small size that it actually was. The sound was perhaps the most similar to ducks quacking, but in a most charming way. I couldn’t believe that Nido was even capable of making something this strange, but it wasn’t impossible, just odd. I played a little while longer, and Kelly glanced at me through the door way, with an expression of utter bewilderment, like a dog with his head cocked.
“Steve, what on earth is that?” Kelly asked with an expression of deep mirth in her voice.
“I don’t know, perhaps a, um ‘duckmonika’,” I jested.
“My, but Mr. Nido has certainly got some strange inventions!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, indeed, but you must consider, not everything he will have made is going to sound like a chorus of angels… on occasion it might sound rather like a chorus of ducks!” I said lightly and we both laughed.
I continued to look through some of these instruments and discovered some more interesting instruments. One instrument looked like a large bowl melded to another bowl that looked like a very large champagne glass. On either side were mallets hanging from little hooks designed for the purpose and on the inside of the bowl were elaborate designs that looked like target spaces to hit for differently desired sounds. Each square was hexagonal, and I figured I’d see if these things actually worked. I set the bowl in front of me, and started to wield the mallets to produce what turned out to be a very interesting and unique set of sounds. The closest thing I could describe to the sound was maybe kettledrums or tympani. Playing it, I could hear a great difference where I would strike, and it seemed obvious to me, that with a few days of practice this instrument could sound quite appealing, at least at an amateur level. Each note was clearly distinct, the same as if I had been playing the piano. I studied the imprinted map on the inside of the bowl for a little while and then thought I’d try my luck playing a song I knew better, albeit a simple one, and out came the finest (and only) production of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, I’d ever heard on the bolophon, as I came to call it. I wondered how the principle of this instrument could work well, if the sound would obviously come out of the end being worked, that is, the inside of the bowl where it is being struck. I then realized, that was part of the point it was like a bell with more deliberate strikes.
I found another instrument as I looked around that looked simply amazing, it was a keyboard instrument, and had many splendid lights and tubes linked throughout the end of it. It looked like a mad scientist’s laboratory, replete with colored liquids going through strange beakers and test tubes, attached to a piano. The keyboard itself had nothing beneath it, but there were two layers of keys. I was extremely eager to hear what this instrument may sound like, since it looked so elaborate. I wondered how long this massive work of engineering must have taken Nido to design, just by looking at it. I inspected nearly every part of it quite thoroughly and called Kelly over to do the same. It appeared to be electric, so I put the plug in a local socket, which was fairly difficult to find, since the sockets were all covered with a heavy waterproof panel, and weren’t obvious if one wasn’t looking for them. This was actually a trend I’d noticed throughout the house, but didn’t actually think of it, until electricity became important. Plugging the instrument in, it lit up in a dazzling display and Kelly exclaimed with delight how resplendent it was. We were both grinning widely at the prospect that this, what must have been Nido’s magnum opus of instruments would sound like, when I struck the first key to play a note.
It played a note, but as I tried to play on, it sounded quite poor in quality. By quite poor, I suppose I mean more that it sounded simply wretched, although the display of colored liquids and dazzling lights was rather stupendous. With every note, that either of us tried on the keyboard it was deafening and sad, like a demonic wailing. It was quite beautiful and pleasing to the eyes and each note brought a visual beauty combined with an auditory ugliness. This contrast was strange and almost upsetting. I hadn’t thought that Nido could make anything himself that was anything but pleasant, and here was this massive instrument that simply played confusion. After stopping and freeing the studio of these awful notes, I started to think what Nido’s true design with this thing may actually be. I asked Kelly, and she was just as confused by it all as I was. After thinking for a couple of minutes, I began laughing almost hysterically. Kelly looked at me again with a cocked head and a raised eyebrow and asked what was so funny. After calming down a bit, I told her that this instrument was a satire; Nido purposefully designed it to be like this. She asked what I meant, and I explained that Nido made this instrument to be a visual spectacle filled with overpowering stimulation on the visual end. I believed that he made it sound bad so as to show that true beauty or even true purpose was not the same as flashiness. Kelly wasn’t entirely convinced so I continued.
“Nido,” I said, “was trying to prove a point to someone or other, that even though something may look like a lot, it doesn’t always live up to any kind of expectations, it is more of what is on the inside that matters.”
“Why would he do that?” Kelly asked.
“Well, I suspect it would probably have something to do with his own designs, perhaps he felt he was trying to create too much form at the expense of function and that this was maybe to prove a point to himself. Or maybe he just had a good sense of humor about it. I don’t suspect there was necessarily a moral implication or lesson for anyone specifically, but you look at this instrument and you expect great things. Where it looks great, it is great, but otherwise it simply isn’t.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” Kelly said smiling, and thinking about it, we both began to laugh again.
Kelly started to look around the instrument room with me at all the strange instruments Nido had invented, and now we didn’t have great expectations for all of the great looking instruments, but we didn’t have low expectations for any of the less significant ones either. We spent some time, picking up nearly all of these and playing one after the other. For the most part, they sounded great, and occasionally they sounded a little more questionable, or perhaps more just unusual but alluring in their own ways, nothing sounded so bad as the keyboarded instrument I later learned would be called an Icaraphone, I suspect in tribute to the Greek myth of Daedulus and Icarus, which seemed quite appropriate.
One thing I still wasn’t entirely clear on after seeing all of these instruments was what exactly Nido did with them all, and if he actually recorded them, or if he would at one point in his life bring people over to play with him or what. I thought surely there must be an answer in the recordings he had made at one point or other. I asked Kelly about it, and she offered some useful observations, and even offered to go and find some more of these recordings. As she looked around, she found a cabinet to be full of what looked like Nido’s recordings, like the CD player upstairs, but with a more comprehensive selection. First she put a CD into the soundboard that said “Violin solos” As she put this on, a well performed violin with only the most minor of flaws came on. I wasn’t entirely sure this was Nido playing, but heard him cough once and immediately recognized the resonance in his voice. What struck me was the question of if Nido was playing the easier or the more difficult violin, when I was quite sure he must be doing the traditional one. I hadn’t realized before, but Nido must have played violin for some time. As he played, I wasn’t familiar with the piece he was playing, but it was evocative of reading a Sherlock Holmes novel, and I believed it must have been a great way for both him and Holmes to stimulate thought.
Kelly put in another CD, and this one was playing one of the instruments Nido had made, it sounded like the trumpet/trombone one I’d first picked up. He played again some composition I wasn’t familiar with, but there were several tracks of him playing this instrument, almost like it was simply a demonstration tape of this particular instrument. There were several more like this, one for each instrument he had made, even the Icaraphone, which was clearly marked on the CD, and that is how I learned its name. With the Icaraphone, Nido explained a little bit about how the show would have been better if only it were a concert and half laughing, at the beginning of the CD. After sorting through some CD’s Kelly found a section called Opus 1, Opus 2 and so on. Kelly put in Opus 1 and as each track played it was one single instrument after another seeming to play the whole piece. It became clear to me at this point that Nido would record himself playing each of the instruments for some grand symphony and then compile them altogether, so that by the end of the CD, there was a great symphony of all his instruments being played by him, at the same time. It was so simple, yet brilliant. Nido would not be restricted by orthodox composition either, he would often go into more of a techno style, and add in vocals and so on. Much of it was absolutely superb, and he somehow was able to recreate monastic chants and beautiful arias without the aide of other people. The chants I figured he just set up the recording studio to cover him doing it all, but the arias I wasn’t so sure about.
After Kelly and I had had about enough of Nido’s recording studios and seen all that really was poignant to witness we decided to go and see what else was in this splendid little house, but didn’t know where to look. It was around this time I had to relieve myself and go to the bathroom.
