Dave Knott

in 1997, Dave proposed an 'installation' in the then store and performance space incarnation of Anomalous Records. his proposal was to mount various discarded strings (not just from guitars, but other instruments) onto scrap board, and then mount those onto the wall above the entry staircase. the strings themselves were often permanently prepared, and with the wall itself (or the banister in the case one) acting as a resonator, they produced a surprising diversity of sounds, much beyond their simple appearance. many people trying them or hearing them played were surprised to hear tones like gongs and cymbals, along with others that sounded more like plunked instruments, albeit with a different bent. as they were in an unusual location that people didn't often use, the stringboards were free to stay up for longer than most things, and over the six months or so that they were up, Dave altered and added to them (sometimes using things like rocks from the parking lot, sticks, door knobs, etc.). plucked, strung and bowed by random visitors, they were used to full effect during Jeph Jerman's weekly improvisations with Aaron Wintersong, which Dave was soon a regular member of. being as they had become a part of the environment for so long (Dave even installed one in the bathroom in the end), we decided it would be wise to document them before Anomalous left the space, especially as Dave had decided to auction them off at the last show. so, Dave and I spent an afternoon close mic'ing (no contact mics here, these needed to sing through the air around them) each stringboard in succession. the playing varied much between very gentle playing letting the notes decay to cacophony of strings assaulted, though did seem to lean overall more towards the calmer side of things. through Dave remained aware of his surrounding, the environment for so many past performances, and actually played along with many ambient elements such as noises coming from the dry cleaner below and the sounds of the street outside, which you can hear on this disc if you listen very closely or turn it up very loud. the resulting 90 minutes we recorded lay for a while, but was in the end painstakingly listened and re-listened to by Dave and edited down to this CD. in the listening back, Dave made many mental notes and associations with all the sounds, which we preserved by marking several tracks with many index points (a feature very few CDs seem to use) and giving each of those a title. the package is completed by liner notes from Jeph Jerman and Dave, photos of the stringboards, and a beautiful full color painting made for the project by Russell W. Gordon.

from Dave's liner notes:
At a woodshop I was renting I had been messing with attaching strings to collected throwaway(found) pieces of plywood. I had a collection of used strings of many types: guitar, bass guitar, cello, violin, dulcimer, harp, piano, along with some types of raw wire including brass and nylon monofilament. I had heard Ellen Fullman's Long String Instrument and wanted to experiment with making strings in long lengths. I enjoyed using two strings to make a longer combined length and found the results to be shimmering. My woodshop mate Peter Bonnell and I were bathed in this new sound unleashed - gongs or distant cymbals. Some kind of defiance of visual representation - a piece of used plywood with some strings across it. What an anomaly!