The daxophone, pictured, has unlimited potential for making new (singing, grunting, hooting, drumming, scatching) noises. It's played by clamping a piece of thin wood, bowing it, and placing another heavy piece of wood on it to change the vibrating length. Each carefully chosen and shaped pieces of wood are called tongues. They are both a sonic and visual art. Each is unique in wood grain, shape, and sound.
Samuel Burt built his first daxophone in 2011 consulting with the inventor Hans Reichel. He held a daxophone workshop at the Red Room in 2019 with aims to form a daxophone choir, playing compositions by living composers and arrangements of older music.
Burt plays daxophone in the band Coy Fish led by Sarah Hughes. They released a self-titled album. They opened for the Library of Congress's "Summer Movies on the Lawn" screening of the Wizard of Oz. Maria Shesiuk and Burt collaborated as Lightning Golem to produce an album of daxophone and synthesizer music called Cryptid Research. Burt engineered a recording of a session in Athens, Georgia, of himself on daxophone, Jeff Crouch on trumpet, and Killick Hinds on fretted Walrus guitar. He released it as Sneaky E.
Burt composed music for two daxophonists and percussion, performing it with Eric Franklin and Shelly Purdy at Artscape 2018. The work, entitled Renku No. 1, is built around a form of Japanese poetry where individuals add stanzas to a poem.
He's built 20 daxophones. Considering a daxophone for yourself? http://samuelburt.com/daxophones/