Christina Wheeler is an American multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and composer. When researching her work, I was particularly impressed with her long list of collaborations with artists I personally admire, such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne, Chaka Khan and John Cale. However, Wheeler is also an accomplished artist in her own right, having developed a unique technique on many unconventional instruments, a few of which she showed us in her talk such as the theremin and autoharp. One instrument she talked about which particularly grabbed my attention was the Array Instruments mbira – I had never heard of this before.

This instrument is a development on the traditional mbira family from Zimbabwe, and has a full four octave range. It is arranged in the circle of fifths, meaning each note is placed to the left of its fifth interval according to the traditional western sense of music theory, until the circle of fifths is completed on the other side. Each note also has four different octaves placed next to each other. The bigger metal tines produce lower octaves and vice versa. Here is a picture of the Array mbira to get an easier idea of how it is laid out:

A note is played by plucking one of the tines, which is then sent to a stereo output by two pickups, one of which picks up the signal of notes from the left of the instrument, whilst the other picks up the signal from the right. Wheeler described this as particularly useful as “you can take one note from the left side and play it and process it in one different way, and then play the same note on the other side and process it in a completely different kind of way”. It makes a particularly calming bell-like sound, and I would love to try one out if I can get my hands on one!

Another part of Wheeler’s talk that I found particularly engaging was when she was asked how she learnt to play all of the instruments she uses. She said that she was mostly self-taught and wants instruments to become ‘more egalitarian for everybody”, rejecting the snobbishness that come sometimes emerge from the classical world – the idea that there are certain set characteristics that determine whether a musician is ‘virtuosic’ at their instrument or not. This is a mindset I definitely agree with, having been self-taught on the majority of instruments I play, including the sitar and zither.

I also agreed with Wheeler’s sentiment to pick up new instruments and “start messing around” with them to “see what kind of sounds you can get”. This is really refreshing opinion for me to hear – having come from a background of playing gigs around London with various musicians I often feel as though there is a snobbish mentality, especially in jazz circles, where there are certain barriers to entry to be able play with other musicians. Being mostly self-taught and not having the greatest knowledge of theory, this has always got under my skin a little bit as I am more interested in building soundscapes than making paint by numbers. To hear an accomplished professional encouraging artists to “be uncomfortable” and experiment with new sounds and instruments in their practice was very inspiring.

This has been one of my favourite talks of the visiting practitioner series, and I will be listening to more of Wheeler’s work in the future.