Didgeridoo Musical Annotation

This is an idea I've been toying with for several years now, moreso since I began studying phonetics a few months ago. As of now, there does not exist any standard notation for the different noises on the didgeridoo. Lessons are taught informally through demonstration and the use of a handful of didgeridoo colloquialisms -toots, screams, "taka-taka", drone, bounce breath, etc. - that refer to specific sounds or articulations. Among didgeridoo players, these sounds are understood, and the colloquialisms serve just fine. However, that's because everyone has already made those noises before and can reliably recreate them. The "notation" for didgeridoo is really nothing more than lingo for those who are already in the know. It does not serve to help others understand how to make noises that they have not yet made.

Imagine telling someone how a word is spelled with no alphabet.

My idea is to create a standard system of didgeridoo articulations based upon the International Phonetic Alphabet. I think this is the perfect foundation for such a project, since many of the diagnostics that are defined by IPA are exactly the types of distinctions that are made between didgeridoo noise: voicing, aspiration, tone, place of articulation, to name a few. Interestingly, I learned a great deal of new noises on didgeridoo when I began studying phonetics! I would take a familiar articulation and change one aspect, such as the place of articulation, and produce a noticeably distinct sound. This is what led me to believe such a system was possible.

Even just thinking about such an endeavor shows me just how important a systems approach is to a project like this. While the IPA does a pretty good job of grouping sounds based upon their manner of articulation, I have a feeling that is one side of the chart I will need to revamp. It's true, there are noises that you can make on the didgeridoo employing the Trill, Plosive, and Fricative manners of articulation (among others), but these are relatively few and do not warrant the entire top half of the chart. Likely this will be replaced with a system that determines air pressure, based upon the manner of air exhaust (using the diaphragm, pharyngeal muscles, cheek muscles, tongue, etc). Other factors I will have to take into account are whether or not there is a continuous drone to a segment, or whether it is divided up into individual sounds. Indeed, there will be a good number of additional phonetic categories that apply to playing the didgeridoo but not necessarily to speech.


For those of you who are not familiar with the IPA, here is a link to a site that does a good job of explaining the different distinctions it makes, and how different sounds are categorized.

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ipa.htm

Size of a system as a factor.

Size of a system as a factor.

I’m writing this blog post from my friend’s farm out in Deadwood, Oregon, which, in case you were wondering, is in the middle of nowhere. The property is completely secluded, and runs off of its own solar electricity. Water is pumped from a well, and food comes from the gardens and animals on the farm. There is only a single, one-lane road that comes out here, and many of the other conventions of society are completely absent from the area. As a result, many of the issues faced by society are also absent. There is no anonymity, even between the neighbors which are further away than regular neighbors. Theft doesn’t happen, violence doesn’t make sense, and greed is obsolete. To me, it seems idyllic that people can live this way. But it isn’t so much the specific things that they do in order to be sustainable, but rather the small scale on which they operate that makes the farm so great.

This got me to thinking about how a system can operate just fine to a certain degree but when the scale of the system is increased greatly, it no longer operates efficiently. I then thought about how we create a whole slew of problems by operating with a national identity that is some 300 million people large as opposed to a realistic identity that reflects one’s current role in their lives. It’s really quite a simple concept, and we don’t even need to think about something as profound as society in order to realize it. Take agriculture, for example. If you’re growing tomatoes for you and your family, you probably will just grow them in soil as opposed to having a whole hydroponic system for a few plants. However, if you were growing tomatoes commercially, it would be a massive chore to switch out the thousands of pounds of soil that need to be moved. Also, it would take a great deal of land and would have to be grown outdoors, which limits the crop to its natural season. Therefore, one would opt to grow the tomatoes hydroponically on an industrial scale, as most places do. Even so, there are a lot of issues that come with commercial farming, and there is a significant loss of food quality and nutrient density when growing hydroponically. So, in short, it would be better if everyone grew their own tomatoes using the system that produces high quality food in a practical, low-cost, low-maintenance fashion.

In the same vein, it would be better if we replaced some of our massive systems that we depend on (grocery stores, gas stations, electricity, plumbing, etc.) with smaller, more sustainable systems. This will result in a higher level of security since there cannot be a central failure of the farming system if the farming system is divided across everyone’s individual gardens and farms.