Timbre

This morning I was out back of my house, cutting down a tree to make a guitar. I chose a redwood because of their great timbre. I whittled down and hallowed out the best part and formed the body of the guitar. I sliced off some metal from my water tower and thinned them down for the strings, and then attached them to the wood. I got a rock for a pick and began to strum.

I was wailing away and having a good time when a bear came out of the woods. My first thought was caution because they are not domesticated. I raised up the guitar in a threatening gesture. The bear held up his paws to assuage me. I put down the guitar. He held up two pine cones, and rubbed them together. They created a sort of washboard rhythm section. I nodded and began playing and he joined in.

A few minutes later five moose walked up to where we were playing. I didn’t stop. I figured they were there to audition and I’d let them chime in when they were ready. They waited a moment to get the feeling, and then they did a choral guttural rhythmic tonic tone that sounded like an organ. It added a richness to our sound. I nodded to the bear and then the moose and we kept going.

Not too long after, a squirrel walked up to us. He had two big bones in his tiny paws. I thought, “How can he lift them, they’re so big and he’s so little.” But then he got this gleam in his eye and lifted the bones like they were toothpicks and he began beating them together. They sounded like thunder claps. His big rhythm added to the intensity of our sound. Everyone moved up a notch.

An owl flew down to the redwood tree stump. I thought, “What could the owl possibly play?” But then the owl began dancing and that’s when I knew we had a band.