Unprolific, I usually make only one piece of art at most every year, but for some reason, I had finished two big projects last year: "Silent Electric Baidarka Tonkori" and "オシラサマ馬頭琴". The former is a chimerical musical instrument-- a mixture of the Aleuts' baidarka kayak and the Ainu's tonkori. And the latter is a hybrid of the Mongolian horse-headed fiddle and Oshirasama, a worship object of folk religion in Tohoku region. ---

Sample video clips of "Silent Electric Baidarka Tonkori" can be watched on my past post: (watch out for the loud heavy-metal-like sound out of the light metal tubing structure of the instrument!)
http://okamoo.com/blog/2014/09/08/%E3%83%90%E3%82%A4%E3%83%80%E3%83%AB%E3%82%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%83%88%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B3%E3%83%AA/ ---

Besides "オシラサマ馬頭琴", I have made some electric instruments parodically after Mongolian horse-headed fiddle, or the morin khuur. I also have made another parody instrument: the Evenki people's "Silent Electric Shaman Drum of Evenki". Both of them were finished years ago. ---

http://okamoo.com/blog/2013/10/23/silet-electric-shaman-drum-of-evenki-%E3%82%A8%E3%83%B4%E3%82%A7%E3%83%B3%E3%82%AD%E3%81%AE%E3%82%B5%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AC%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A8%E3%83%AC%E3%82%AD%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B7/ ---

With a couple of stringed instruments (bowed and plucked) and one percussive instrument in hand, I am thinking of adding a wind instrument to my work repertoire-- "Throat Singing Machine" that is. --

The instrument will equipped with artificial voice chords that generate a kind of noise which contains a wide spectrum of sound wavelength; a particular wavelength of the noise is amplified in the resonant cavity modeled after human's nasal and oral cavity, expecting over tones like Mongolian khoomii; the volume of the cavity varies with the artificial toungue's positions along with the movements of mechanical lips and jaw so that the over tone's pitch varies in accordance with the size and shape of the resonant cavity. ---

This "Throat Singing Machine" project will definitely be challenging, Though it is so difficult even for a human to perform the throat singing, how can a toy-like gadget mimic the subtle lingual and labial controls to effectively resonate the overtones?. It is going to take some time to complete the instrument (rather device or apparatus) and that will be my only piece I make this year...