Autumn recording at the museum of a famous Sanukite lava stone instrument manufacturer in “Kei no Sato”, Sakaide, Shikoku Island, Japan.
A sanukitophone (lithophone in English) is a percussion instrument entirely made of sanukite lava rocks. It produces a very delicate and, depending on the instrument type, complex sound when touched with a (felt) mallet or even by hand.
All sounds of this recording were created by touching various spots of a Sanukite lava stone “Rou” instrument with a felt mallet. A “Rou” contains particular vibrations characteristics and is not tuned. The sounds of “Rou” are complex and want to be discovered. Each “Rou” instrument sounds different. They all have unique sounds that cannot be reproduced identically on another "Rou". Depending on where and how the instrument is touched, various metallic-sounding sounds can be produced.
Sanukite instruments can generate frequencies outside the range of human hearing. Apart from the deep bass tones of other lithophone-type instruments, no other known rock has such acoustic properties, especially in the low frequency range.
This recording is dedicated to Hitoshi Maeda, the inventor of the “Rou” instruments, who passed in 2008, and to the exceptional Japanese percussionist and composer Stomu Yamast'ha, the master of “Rou”. Among other places, he played the Sanukite instruments at the Stonehenge monument in England in the 1990s.
Special thanks to:
Munekazu Maeda for permission to record in his Sanukite Museum.
Note: This work is far from a composition in the classical sense. Rather, it is a modest approach to discover the mysterious sounds of Sanukite "Rou" instruments.