Early to Bed,
Early to Rise,
Makes a Man
Healthy, Wealthy
and Wise.
 
Perhaps like me, you've always believed that Benjamin Franklin originated this proverb. Not so! Variously adapted, it has a long history in print that begins (according to the scholar Wolfgang Mieder) in 1496. But our hero did publish it in his Poor Richard's Almanack for the Year 1735; my grammar school teachers attributed it to Franklin; and as a passive, credulous, utterly ahistorical American, that'll always be good enough for me. Anyway, there's no doubt I would benefit from its application.
 
Yet for awhile I've had this idea of drawing quiet nighttime music through residential neighborhoods from, say, two to four in the morning. I'd put a playback rig atop a Flexible Flyer (invented by Samuel Leeds Allen of Philadelphia!), and draw it over a fresh snowfall. I thought a music that skipped along the angelic / Puckish continuum would be just about right for this scene. I wouldn't want to wake or disturb anyone—just transmit a little gentle sound to dreamers.
 
Participation in this present project suggested to me an ideal timbral world—for Benjamin Franklin did invent the glass armonica, an instrument of three or so octaves of tuned glass bowls spinning on an axle. An accomplished amateur musician, Franklin especially liked to play Scottish tunes upon it. Later composers, Mozart, Beethoven and Strauss among them, affirmed the armonica's consummate ethereality and purity. To learn more, I conducted a long interview with Cecilia Brauer, a multi-instrumentalist with New York's Metropolitan Opera who has become a leading expert on and performer of the armonica. Rather gracious and brimming with lush anecdotes, Mrs. Brauer allowed me to hack away at the fine armonica residing in her music room. [For those interested in learning more about the instrument, Franklin's relationship to it and its subsequent uses, Mrs. Brauer's website is an excellent place to start: www.gigmasters.com/armonica/.]
 
Then I went back to my own world. Georg Essl, a colleague in the SoundLab at Princeton University, had developed a [mathematical/computer] physical model of a finger on glass, written in C++. A professor of mine, Dan Trueman, had already ported [translated] another of Essl's physical models (as if you bowed vibraphone bars with a violin bow) to C, for use in the popular music programming language Max/MSP. I modified that port and began to play with my new armonica object [in MSP]. I could change certain parameters over time, such as finger pressure, resonance and vibrato. I used this new 'instrument' to render textures of long tones and several lullabies, including Scottish and early American lullabies. I threw in several wildcard elements, just for fun. Sadly, I had to stay up late working on it.

http://silvertone.princeton.edu/~ted/