Going off piste on a trip to somewhere like South Sudan, it’s pretty difficult to re-acclimatise to being back.  Out there every day is a whirlwind.   Back here it’s the same old.   Working and learning a craft is particularly repetitive – there’s no way round it, you’ve got to do it thousands of time to get good at it!  I must say though, the last few weeks, during which I’ve started designing a few new keys of MKs, have been excellent – working with a head full of new ideas and mulling over events in South Sudan, the workshop remains one of my favourite places to be.  Any slack moment though and I do start wondering if I could be back in there.

Making musical instruments isn’t something you’ll learn over night.  I probably should’ve guessed that!  I look back on ten years work and wonder where all the time has gone.  Continuing at the same rate of progress I’d have 2 lifetimes work here.  The fact is that the fundamental faith you have in your idea(s), and the optimism required to keep you going when things aren’t working out quite right, is exactly what gets in the way when questioning yourself and your methods – stubborness can be a great asset as well a troublesome affliction!  But on an even more basic level, you can’t be close to something – up to your eyeballs problem solving, scoring music, making things or whatever, and maintain the perspective you need to make good decisions, that’s a fact.

One method I’ve tried to adopt, which I’ve dubbed the ‘Shitstorm‘,  is to take some time out to pull things apart and be overly critical.  It’s like imagining a shit storm and working out where the shit is going to get it in – hence finding where weaknesses are.  With bigger teams someone might fulfil this task naturally (the person disagrees with everyone or shouts down ideas may not be useful when bouncing ideas around in a Brainstorm but can be massively helpful when full-proofing ideas and adding a reality check).  To do it to yourself, with your own ideas, isn’t an easy thing, but completely necessary.   I’m sure great artists, musicians, scientists or whatever, all have this quality: asking ‘Is there a better way to do this’ or ‘can I do it differently?’ if not, they’d stagnate.

So I’ve made some decisions, will discontinue making some models of Mk whistles, and I’ll have a whole lot more time to work on new ideas – a decision that should’ve been made about 5 years ago, but better late than never!

The workshop at close of play today:

After exploring lots of different routes for the key structure on the toob chromatic whistle, Brian and myself have decided to to spend some time focusing on the possibility of using some kind of fabric hinge, possibly a woven carbon fibre. Used in conjunction with Titanium these could be the lowest profile and lightest keys ever found on any woodwind instrument with lots of possibilities to play with the aesthetic.  The question remains though: can we make it work? I’m optimistic. Here’s the very first iteration of the concept.

At the end of a tough week, I pause for thought.   The company which have been anodising the MKs for me had a fire at their production facility.  Fortunately no-one was hurt and it was contained reasonably effectively.   Their initial estimate of return to production in 2-3 weeks though, has become 2-3 months as they’ve realised what’s involved in getting things back up and running …and a break in their production means a break in mine also.

In the quest for ‘total quality’, you come to appreciate people you work with who do excellent work.  When I started out I was actually doing all anodising ‘in house’ (and it was literally in house and very often in the middle of the night at the end of ridiculously long shift in the workshop).  After I realised it wasn’t economical to continue doing in house I went through no less than four companies before finding one that could replicate the quality I had achieved.  And that was just one part of a production chain in which everyone needed to be working to exceptionally high standards.  Now material comes from the Netherlands, parts are made on a Swiss precision lathes using American tooling with design & assembly in Scotland.  But despite seeking the best in their respective fields, as this week’s proved, it’s not watertight.

Musical instruments are tough things to make, and the tiniest of imperfection can leave you with thousands of pounds of scrap.

I spotted this picture by Glasgow artist David Shrigley at the Gallery of Modern Art today and I wondered if this could be me.

One thing can be sure however, that whatever the fire means for me, it’s worse for them.  I wish them the best of luck with getting back up and running.

Some pictures from around the workshop, taken by James Dunbar:

My first machine: a Colchester Student MK1, made in the late 1950s and still very accurate.  Purchased some 11 years ago, I’ve spent a lot a of time at this machine, although much less lately.  A fantastic machine to work at.

The Toob has been testing both Brian and myself recently.  There have been sporadic bursts of promise that seem to have come crashing down one way or another.  It’s always a case of reminding yourself that this is in fact part of the design process – it’s a case of trying out ideas until one works, and you do only need one core idea to work.

So I’ve been working on a project to create a chromatic whistle for roughly six years.  It’s a typically long and protracted process for designing a musical instrument, but like so many of the things I’ve been involved with in the last few years, it might be taking longer than expected but it is actually turning out better than expected.  The instrument, which is likely to be called a ‘Toob’, is based on a new key system which leaves the initial tone hole layout and architecture of the whistle in tact – making it easy for musicians to adopt.  At the moment, it exists as a working prototype (it works, but it looks rubbish!), but there are still a few challenges to be faced in terms of the making and refinement.

Until now I’ve kept the design ‘under my hat’ so-to-speak – this is certainly the ‘traditional’ way of approaching innovation – show somebody your ideas and they will steal them!  But watching the effect that several big companies with this approach are having, and the recent emergence of collaborative working methods like open source, has caused me to think that there’s a huge amount to be gained from throwing the gates open, documenting our progress, and inviting feedback – so we can harness the expertise of the music community to make the best possible musical instrument we can.  It’s an approach which will stand in complete contrast to the ‘romantic’ vision of a instrument maker, shut away, tirelessly working to perfect their ‘masterpiece’.

In addition to myself, designer Brian Loudon (http://loud1design.co.uk) will be collaborating on the project and it’ll be introduced in more detail and documented on the mk blog.  It offers the opportunity for anyone to get involved with the design and testing of a next generation musical instrument.  I for one am excited by what we might come up with.

I finally managed to finish the design for the display stand – something that took considerably more effort than it perhaps should have.  I find so many ideas start out simple.  Developing these ideas adds layers which give it depth, but also erode the simplicity of the original idea.  I find latter stages almost always involve whittling things back to capture the freshness of the original idea.   This is certainly something that I’ve found holds true in any of the creative fields I’ve worked in – music, design, writing, photography, but then this might also be an approach which is specific to me – after all, if we all approached creating things the same way, then the chances are we wouldn’t come up with much creative!

This display stand has been designed as a point of sale to display musical instruments.  I originally had all the profiling of the material cut by the amazing process waterjet cutting – a high pressure stream of water which can cut through most things including metals, wood and stone.  As you can probably imagine the foam and ali used on the stand didn’t cause it too much problem.  The waterjet however couldn’t replicate the detail as seen on the top plate, and so laser profiling emerged as the best way to do this – more expensive but able to handle fine detailing much better.   Both processes pretty new to me, it was a really interesting project to work on and should open up some doors in the future.

The last few months have been little more than making whistles and ice climbing.  Along with Nik Powell we’ve been reviewing and improving the production processes we use for making the instruments.  Aside from a display stand to go into shops there’s been little in the way of new design.  While the amazing climbing in the Scottish highlands this winter has provided it’s own excitement and the weekly routine has been productive, there has been little in the way of new experiences to provide inspiration to take into a new design stage.   At times like this I try to remind myself that sometimes you have to keep your head down and get on with things until a window of opportunity appears [keeping your powder dry - as my dad would say].  In the mean time, here’s some pictures from weekend adventures of late:

Winter has been raging around us here is Scotland and we’ve been buried deep in the engine room at MK HQ looking over the production processes we use to make the whistles.  Whether it be another file stroke here or there, cutting out unnecessary work, or micro detail inspecting, the idea is to leave no stone unturned, and year on year we make improvements that work their way through into the final quality.