[Trombone-l] Conch shell on Reveultas

Wed Aug 15 11:22:35 CDT 2007

That's amazing.  Thanks for posting it!
Ray

On another list where I asked about conch shell a guy posted this from 
Steve Turre:

Masterclass with Steve Turre: Making Music with Shells

Bob Bernotas  - Trbnplyr at aol.com 
Freelance Journalist  

Steve Turre

Related Info 
List of Steve Turre's Recordings 
Steve Turre's Yamaha Artist's Page 

"When I was a teenager, I used to play with Rahsaan
Roland Kirk whenever he would come through San
Francisco. Every time he'd have something different, a
nose flute or the black mystery pipe or whatever. One
time he had a conch shell. He just blew one note on it
while he was banging a gong, like a call, but the
sound was so beautiful it made me tingle. So I blew a
note on it and said, "Man, that's it! I'm getting one
of these!" Over the years I kept developing it and
correcting it, and collecting more shells of various
sizes and pitches." 

I just love the sound. I wish I could make my trombone
sound like a shell, in terms of the resonance. I mean,
the shells sound just as full standing behind or on
the side as they do in front. Dexter Gordon had that
kind of sound on the tenor saxophone. 

Generally, I buy my shells in stores. It's very
important that you get a shell that's a perfect
specimen. It should come to a perfect point, more or
less. If you find one on the beach and it's been
beaten up by the water and the wind and the sun,
chances are it's no good. And a lot of times you'll
find a shell where someone's knocked a hole in it to
get the meat out. A shell with a hole is no good. 

Now you have to make a "mouthpiece." Cut the point of
the shell with a hacksaw, approximating the size of
the inside rim of your mouthpiece, depending on
whether you play trumpet or trombone. For a trumpet
mouthpiece, cut it closer to the point, because it's
smaller. For a trombone mouthpiece, come down a little
to where the shell gets bigger. Remember to cut it
slightly small, because if you want to adjust it you
can always sliver off a little more to make it bigger.
If you cut it too big, you've got to start all over
again with a new shell. 

Inside the shell there is a center core that you have
to knock out. Take a screwdriver or a small chisel and
a light hammer. Don't hit it too hard, but if you tap
it, it will break off. Then you can file the rest
down. I use a little hand-held grinder called a
Dremel. 

After you get the approximate size of your mouthpiece,
take a medium-fine file and file it to get all the saw
marks out. Then take an extra-fine file and file it
down again, and round the edges a little bit. Then put
a piece of extra-fine sandpaper in the palm of your
hand, put the nose of the shell with the mouthpiece
into it and turn it back and forth. The paper will
conform to the shell and you can smooth it out even
more. 

If you really want to smooth it out, you can take
pumice on a rag and do that again. You could play a
shell without doing all this, but you're going to hard
pressed to play anything else after it because it's
going to tear your lip up, which is the problem I had
in the beginning. 

Sometimes shells have irregularities in them, or the
shell might grow real thin at a certain point. When
they're too thin to approximate the rim of the
mouthpiece I use the plastic material that they make
dentures from to build up the outside of the shell, so
it will be thick enough to make a rim. I leave the
inside of the shell natural, so my lip is actually
touching the shell, but this way I have a little bit
of cushion. If you try to play and the rim of the
natural shell is only a sixteenth of an inch, man, it
just tears you up. It's not sharp, but it's too small.

OK, you've got an instrument, now how do you play it?
You produce the sound with your lips, the same as a
brass instrument. Control and change the pitches with
your embouchure and with your hand inside the shell.
With the bigger shells, you don't get much range,
maybe a third, sometimes a fourth. On some smaller
shells I can get as much as a sixth. You also can get
overtones, generally just the octave, but on some of
the larger ones you can get more than an octave. 

When you play the shell, you work down from the open
note. That's the principal tone. As you put your hand
in, it gets lower. The principal should be a note
that's in the key of the tune you're playing,
preferably a strong note, like the fifth or the
root--or the seventh, if it's a blues. 

Some of my shells are "in the cracks," in terms of
what the piano intonation is. You can play almost any
shell, but when you cut them and play them, some of
them are really much, much better than others. So if
you get one that's really great, even if it's in the
cracks--let's say, you get one that's between a Bb and
an A--well, I know where the pitch is when I'm going
to blow it. So if I want to play an A, I put my hand
in there just a tiny bit. If I want to play a Bb, I'll
lip it up a little bit, and start from there. You just
have to know what the pitch is and get to know each
instrument as an individual and deal with it from
there. 

I have a set of shells that I use when I play from the
key of C into the sharp keys and I have another set
that I use to play the flat keys. In the sharp keys,
the open note is E or B or D, etc., and the ones in
the flat keys are Bb, Ab, F, etc. Then I can blow two
shells at once and play harmony. 

You can't play Giant Steps on the shell. I think the
most harmonically complex thing I can play is the
blues, and it's really best on modal or vamp tunes,
like in Latin music. But if you can tell a story using
rhythmic concepts and simple melody, it's very
effective. Also, I have to leave space in my solos,
because if I'm playing in one register, and I want to
go to the other register, I need time to pick one
shell up and put the other one down. 

Playing the shells can help you as a brass player.
They take a lot of endurance, a lot more air and
strength. As a rule, after I've played the shells,
playing the trombone is, physically, a little easier.
Also, in terms of building a solo, once you can tell a
story in just the interval of a fourth, you see that
it's not necessarily about how many notes you play.
It's about what you're saying. So playing the shells
really helps you conceptually, because if you can play
simple, then when you do play complex, it will mean
something. 

Walter Barrett wrote:
>
> You can check out Steve Turre playing shells here...
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkuq6prZHoA
>
>
> Walter Barrett
>
> "The music business is a cruel and shallow money
> trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and
> pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.
> There's also a negative side."
> 	--Hunter S. Thompson
>
> Alto, tenor, bass trombones
> Bass trumpet, euphonium, tuba
> Yamaha Artist/Clinician
> http://www.walterbarrett.com
>
>
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