Gallery: Ken Butler: Making Music at Ten10 Studios
On Saturday, Ten10 Studios in Long Island City hosted three music performances at its 47th Road studio space. As the show was literally around the corner from home, I went to snap about forty photos of the night’s performances.
The night was capped by a performance by Ken Butler, a renowned music instrument builder, who played about a dozen handmade instruments he built over the years. All of the instruments are built from found objects, as you’ll see below, and converted to musical instruments through the strategic placement of a contact microphone. He would also use a sound processor to loop percussive sounds as a back beat.
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- He started with playing a golf club.
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- He plays a guitar-like device with two strings and tennis racket.
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- He then played a shovel with strings.
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- Butler plays another guitar-like instrument that resembled a machine gun. Note the comb that resembles an ammunition clip.
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- An umbrella makes for a variety sounds when it is closed and opened.
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- Although it has a string, he also played a sword as a percussion instrument.
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- Speaking of sharp objects, here Ken Butler played a smaller knife.
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- He also utilized the bristles and the handle of a toothbrush against his teeth to create various sounds.
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- Running out of props, he resorted to the zipper on his pants…
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- By the end, he used his body and finished with playing his head as a drum.
It’s both incredible and empowering to see how many possible musical instruments Butler made with the everyday objects.
