Instruments by Harry Partch

Partch built two steel-string guitars: the six-string Adapted Guitar I, and the ten-string Adapted Guitar II (played with a slide). Partch first started experimenting with such instruments in 1934, and the Adapted Guitar I first appeared in Barstow in 1941.[10] In 1945, he began using amplification for both instruments.[10]

Tuning of the four strings of Harry Partch's Adapted Viola. It also shows the ratios in which each string is tuned (G=1/1).

The Adapted Viola is the earliest extant instrument created by Partch. It is made from a cello fingerboard neck attached to the body of a viola.[11] It also includes a changeable bridge which allows triple stops, i.e. full triads, to be sustained.[12] Partch hammered brads into the fingerboard to aid with finding fingerings.[2] The Adapted Viola was constructed in New Orleans with the assistance of an Edward Benton, a local violin maker. Partch originally called it the Monophone, but by 1933 it had become known as the Adapted Viola.[11]

Partch tuned the Adapted Viola an octave below the violin and the brads inserted into the instrument fingerboard are placed at ratios commonly used in Partch's works. In playing the instrument, Partch called for a "one-finger technique," which is "much closer to the spirit of Indian vina playing than it is to the pipe organ."[13] Specifically, he desired that notes should be approached by gliding from tone to tone:

The finger may start slowly on its move, increase speed, and hit the next ratio exactly. It may move very fast from the first ratio, and then move slowly and insinuatingly into the next—so slowly, sometimes, that one is not sure as to the point where rest has been achieved. Or, all this may be reversed. What the bow is doing meanwhile, in its capacity of providing an infinitude of nuance, is supremely important.

— Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music, page 202

As Partch's first instrument, the Adapted Viola is used heavily in many of his early mature compositions. In works such as Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po and Two Psalms the music is scored only for Adapted Viola and intoning voice.[14]

Nicknamed "Boo" and "Boo II", the Bamboo Marimbas are marimbas made of bamboo, using the concept of a tongued resonator to produce the tones.

The Boo I was first built in 1955.[15] Some of the bamboo was replaced with larger-diameter pieces in 1963. It has a total of 64 bamboo resonators, organized into six ranks. The back ends of the tubes are sealed.[16]

Boo II was built in 1971. It also has 64 tubes, but the tubes are open at both ends. The tongues cut into the bamboo are approximately 1/6 of the length of the tube in order to produce a harmonic at 6/5 of the fundamental.[16]

The Bass Marimba and Marimba Eroica have more traditional linear layouts and are very low in pitch.

The Bass Marimba was first built in 1950. It has eleven bars made of Sitka spruce. The lowest bar corresponds to a piano C2. It can be played with mallets or by slapping with the pads of the fingers.[16]

The Marimba Eroica was built in 1954. It comprises four bars of Sitka spruce on top of large resonator boxes. The lowest bar sounds at 22 Hz, approximately the F below the lowest note of a piano.[16]

The Chromelodeons are pump organs modified by Partch to conform to his tonality system. Chromelodeon I was adapted in 1945 from a 73-key pump organ. Chromelodeon II was adapted in 1959 from an 88-key pump organ. Both keyboards have colored and numbered labels representing ratios of the tuning system.[16]

The Cloud-Chamber Bowls are a set of 12-US-gallon (45 L), 16-inch diameter Pyrex bowls cut from carboys, suspended in a frame. The carboys were originally sourced from the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, where they were used in the construction of cloud chambers.[16][17][18] It was first built in 1950.[15]

The Diamond Marimba is a marimba with keys arranged in a physical manifestation of the 11-limit tonality diamond.[19] Partch first built it in 1946.[15]

The Eucal Blossom is a bamboo marimba with 33 resonators in three rows of eleven, supported by a branch of eucalyptus.[16] It was first built in 1964.[15]

Twelve temple bells bolted to gourd resonators on a bar of eucalyptus, and two Douglas Aircraft bomber nosecones.[20] First built in 1964.[15]

The Harmonic Canons (from the same root as qanún) are 44-stringed sonometer instruments with complex systems of movable bridges that were mostly positioned by Partch on harmonic nodal positions to get a just intoned harmonic relation between the left and right string part. They are tuned differently depending on the piece, and are played with fingers or picks, or in some cases, unique mallets.

Harmonic Canon I (1945), II (1953), III (1965).[15]

Named after their inspiration, the Greek kithara, the Kitharas are 71-by-43-inch (180 cm × 110 cm)[21] upright 72-stringed instruments,[17] tuned by sliding pyrex rods underneath the strings, and played with fingers or a variety of plectra.

The Kithara I was first built in 1938, and restored in 1972. The Surrogate Kithara was built in 1953, and the Kithara II in 1954.[15]

The Mazda Marimba is made of Mazda light bulbs and named after the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda.

Partch built the Quadrangularis Reversum in 1965, about twenty years after the Diamond Marimba.[15] The central section's 36 African padauk blocks are an upside-down, mirrored version of the Diamond Marimba—hence Reversum. This reverse possibility was shown to Partch by Erv Wilson who helped with its construction. To the left and right are sets of ten alto-register blocks.[19] Bamboo resonators are under the blocks. Partch's initial plan, abandoned due to cost, was to use square bamboo (C. quadrangularis) for the resonators—hence the first part of the instrument's name.[22] The curved uprights are eucalyptus, and the bar across the top is intended to evoke a torii. The instrument is quite large at 103 inches (2.6 m) across the top and 79 inches (2.0 m) tall.[23]

The Spoils of War is a collection of several instruments, including more Cloud Chamber Bowls, artillery shell casings, metal "whang-guns", a Pernambuco wood block, and a gourd.[17][24] First built in 1950.[15]

The Zymo-Xyl is an oak-block xylophone augmented with tuned liquor and wine bottles, Ford hubcaps, and an aluminum ketchup bottle. The name is from the Greek zymo- for "fermentation", and xylo- or xyl- for "wood".[25] First built in 1963.[15]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Harry Partch.

• Experimental musical instrument
• List of works by Harry Partch

• Harry Partch Information Center
• Corporeal Meadows: Harry Partch an American Original
• American Mavericks: Harry Partch's Instruments – playable with explanations and musical examples Archived 2008-07-05 at the Wayback Machine