Martoche
Benoit Delbecq
Martoche
When I was 9 or 10 years old, I found myself crafting a special kind of hammer, I called it a “martoche” (a mix of marteau and mailloche, hammer and mallet), in order to be able to play directly on the strings of the upright family piano. I used a long paint brush for radiators, taking advantage of the shape to make the gesture easier. I asked my mother for some felt—she found red felt, I remember I loved that color, the same as most pianos’ felt—and stapled a piece around the brush hair. I remember being really curious about the sounds I could produce and used it for a while. I added scotch tape too, to experiment. But it’s only years later, probably around 1984 (aged 18 or so) that I started to craft little bits of wood and I curved them in order to be better “trapped” by the strings’ tension. My main interest in using the sticks is adding to their sonic possibilities, to continue my research in phase shifting or speed illusions as well as hemiolas, with the keyboard, vertigo-like fabrics of animated sounds; adding sort of contra-punctual vocal endeavors too. I continue to randomly pick up wood sticks in forests, parks, gardens, dry them and cut the ones I intuitively think will sound interesting. The nice thing about it is that you never know how they’re going to sound. I have boxes and boxes of them, and even my kids sometimes bring me a wood stick thinking “you might not have tried this one.” Also, the ones I use, I usually remember where they come from, and, of course, they come from all parts of the world. They’re usually between 8 and 20 cm, with a diameter between 0.5 to 2 cm, but the lower part is beveled down to between 1 and 3 mm. Some sticks have a knot in their wood, some don’t. Some are very dense (rosewood...), some are very light (elm...), hence their behaviors are to be tamed by playing them. And, of course, the shape of the stick is most important. When cut by machines following mathematical proportions they generate more “logical” overtones and sub-tones; I’ve tried that, but I really prefer when they are sort of unpredictable, overtone speaking. Now, the good thing about it is that you improvise and adapt in order to make do with what you have, there’s no routine at all. Still, each stick will produce a kind of sound that will stay within its own “family” of sounds. And then the overtone’s choreography and geography of sonic behavior is proper to each instrument.
Now, back in the years I also started to prepare... the preparation itself, i.e., the wood stick itself by planting thumbtacks in the upper part of the string. I mean old school tacks with a hard, plastic wrap. I have boxes of these particular tacks in stock because today they’re really hard to find! The plastic wrap around the tack buzzes and it gives the resonances a very different feel, close to the traditional likembe from Congo (a thumb piano with sizzling metal rings around the blades). Also, I stick old homeopathic school tubes (aluminum) on the stick with hard glue, in order to have a more metallic resonance, plus I can always put a little nail or anything small from the haberdashery shop inside the tube. This gives me a larger pallet of sizzling sounds... Now, writing this to you, it is obvious that the curiosity I had found using my homemade martoche had already opened my ears and will to experiment... Unfortunately, this object has disappeared from the family house.
Benoit Delbecq is a composer/performer, and pianist, based in Paris.