MUSIC and HANDMADE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
Lorena Babcock Moore
A Handful of Earthstars: Digital albums of acoustic instrumental music. Listen or download on BANDCAMP.
Desert
Incense July 2017
Guitar, acoustic bass, fretless banjo, cicadas and sawblade
gongs, cat purrs, stone flute, and sandhill cranes.
Lost
Water, Iron Wind May 2016
Fretless banjo and night bird calls, handmade iron bells and flutes, drumming
on hollow oak trees and abandoned steel water tanks,
and a field recording of the whirling rhythms of an abandoned windmill.
EARTHSTARS
are puffball fungi. The ball-shaped spore sac has an outer layer that
splits into a flowerlike "star" of radiating points.
The logo on both album covers is Geastrum coronatum,
the Crowned Earthstar.
It grows on decaying plant material such as leaves, twigs, and seedpods.
The three drawings on the cover of DESERT INCENSE are Astraeus hygrometricus,
the Water Measurer.
It is ectomycorrhizal, forming a mutually beneficial partnership with the roots
of several species of trees.
The outer points curl over the spore sac when the fungus is dry. After
a rain, they expand and open out.
Astraeus and Geastrum are in different families and are not
related to each other. Their similarity of form is a result of convergent
evolution.
My fretless banjo. Made in 1982 by Ralph Dellinger of
North Carolina. Curly sugar maple with natural skin head.
I replaced the original inlaid walnut frets with brass, and made the copper
dots, iron/copper tailpiece, fossil ivory nut, and carved stone tuning pegs.
Stones are volcanics from southern Arizona mountains. Steel patches on
the rim help stabilize a crack.
FORGED IRON BELLS
STONE OCARINA NECKLACE:
Custom flute carved by Whittaker Freegard, 1995. Stone is a flint
pebble from Cretaceous chalk, Salisbury, England.
I made the forged iron hooks, recycled copper tube beads, and carved
stone beads (calcsilicate hornfels from Helvetia, Santa Rita Mountains, Arizona).
"Half Moon Hollow" RATTLE: Eastern box turtle shell
(honey locust beans inside), coyote metatarsal bones, whitetail deer hooves.
Content copyright ©2017 by Lorena Babcock Moore.