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Small RoomsA review of the small-room show

Room 03 · The instrument

The instrument: the melodica and the small kit

A blown, keyed free reed instrument and the rest of a show that fits in two bags: what each object is for and what it costs to carry.

An open hard instrument case on bare floorboards with a folded wool blanket inside it and a canvas bag strap across the corner of the frame

The instrument room starts with the one on the domain: the melodica, a keyboard you blow. It is a small free reed instrument, sold under a Hohner trade name since the 1950s, and it behaves in a quiet room in a way a guitar does not. Its note starts when the air starts and stops when the air stops, and nothing about it decays on its own.

The second note zooms out to the whole kit. A show that fits in two bags is not a compromise for people without a van: it is a design problem with a clear objective function, since every object carried has to earn its weight in what the audience actually hears.

Nothing here is a product review

The review names no brand as a recommendation, publishes no prices and takes no equipment from anybody. Where a manufacturer or a patent is cited, it is cited as a document, with its date, because that is the only kind of claim about an instrument that can be checked from a chair.

Room 03

In this room

The notes of this room, most recent first.

  1. A guitar bag and a padded instrument bag standing upright against a basement wall beside a bus timetable taped to the plaster

    · The instrument

    Carrying a show on instruments that fit in two bags

    A small-room set travels on two bags: one holds the instrument, the other holds everything else and has to close. The desk sets out the test that decides each object, what the house can be asked for, and what the unpacking costs the slot.

  2. An empty wooden chair beside a music stand with a folded coat draped over the stand, in a bare daylit room with wide floorboards

    · The instrument

    The melodica in a quiet room

    The melodica is a keyboard you blow: the note begins with the air and ends with it. This note works out what that does to a held chord, to the breath the front row hears, and to the attack a low ceiling returns twice.

Two neighbouring rooms carry the same question further: The set and The writing. How the desk works is written in the editorial policy.