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Steam cello to electric cello...
Philip Sheppard's other cello
By Nick Kimberley - The Independent 16 June 2000
Philip Sheppard's electric cello is little more than five strings (one more than the conventional cello) and a finger-board mounted atop a spike, but in Sheppard's expert hands, and with the help of a computerised bridge, a digital box of tricks and a speaker, it becomes akin to a whole orchestra. He draws his bow across the strings, and the sound of a marimba emerges; then, with the "marimba" still playing, he provides a cello line for it to accompany.
He can set up a jazz combo, a string band, a viol consort, or a harmonica with low notes no bluesman ever dreamt of. Each string can become a different percussion instrument; and it can even play as a cello. No wonder he confesses: "I've wasted many a day playing with the instrument. The first time I ever did a concert with it, I overloaded the system. Now I only use it like that if I'm writing a soundtrack and need to get a sound quickly. What I really love is its natural, completely acoustic cello sound, with a whole kaleidoscope of harmonies. You can turn what might otherwise be a dry string of notes into something that has its own dimensions. I'm trying to create the idea of space within the sound."
The instrument was made to order by Eric Jensen in Seattle: "He only charged me for the wood, and I've ended up with this gorgeous instrument, with a wonderful purity of sound. The maple in the fingerboard comes from a barn in Pennsylvania that was 250 years old."
Part of what Sheppard seeks is something that he feels was lost when beauty of sound for its own sake became the goal: "Instrument-makers in the 17th century added a great deal of beauty, but they took away some of the dirt in the sound. I've played quite a few Stradivarius cellos and they do make a lovely rich, chocolatey sound. But sometimes you need anonymity in the note, a clean sound so that you can then take it into the beauty which is pre-assigned in a Stradivarius."
Sheppard's intention, though, is not to use the electric instrument to supplant what he calls his "steam cello": "It would be awful if it were used to play Bach. That wouldn't help the music, it wouldn't make it sound nicer. You can't beat an acoustic cello in the music which was written for it. I want to play what I can't play on my real cello. "It's more about performance art: I can, for instance, play it as a cello while using one of the strings to control the lighting, depending on what note I hit and how hard. It becomes a theatrical tool, and that fascinates me. "