Multimedia Movie #1 "Combo" in action, front 1.3 MB, MPG Movie #2 Gears in action 445K, MPG Need the plugin? See combo being built! Pictures of mechanical system.

Sometimes at shows, people would look at my "Marathon" piece and say, "Where's the music?" That started me thinking. I thought, "I'm going to create a piece that makes it's own music."

The only real change from concept to final piece is that, originally, I wanted the drummers to be sitting on the floor, but the movement of their arms and the height of the drums sort of prevented this. One question I had was how to make miniature drums sound like drums and not blocks of wood. The answer was to glue a thick piece of wood on top of the barrel part, and then slice off as much as possible on the table saw, leaving a very thin "skin" remaining. The results are real drums.

For the female figure, I wanted a girl who is really "shakin' her hips", and is also, a little bit sexy; something I've never attempted before. I think it succeeds at both nicely; (the working title for this piece was "Hoochie Mama.")

The real challenge on this piece was fabricating the 14 cams and levers that move all the strings. As the photos show, this piece, (well, all of my pieces), required a lot of trial and error work. I would fabricate a cam, install it, crank up the motor, turn it on, observe resulting movement, change cam, reinstall it, crank it up, turn it on, observe resulting movement and repeat as often as necessary. The rhythm was actually worked out on my computer using a MIDI music program. Once I worked out a good groove, I printed out the notes, and enlarged the printout to the length of the circumference of my 5" diameter cams, then I marked out the beats on the cams. From there everything fell into place.

My favorite figure has to be the bell ringer; he just sits there patiently waiting for his turn to play; the female comes in a close second.

This piece will run for about eleven minutes on a full winding, but I added a run/stop switch for shorter runs.

This piece took home the "Best of Show" award at the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, in Tampa, FL in March of 2002.