Hopkin Instrumentarium: Tines & Echoes

Tines & Echoes is a unique hand-crafted tuned percussion instrument created by instrument designer and sound sculptor Bart Hopkin. It's a pentagonal sound box with 25 chromatically-tuned metal tines that each have a pair of sympathetic strings spanning the instrument's sound board. Rather than tuning the sympathetic strings to their primary tines, they are tuned randomly, so that vibrations resonate different string combinations bound to other tines. When the tines are plucked, they produce a sharp, crisp water-drop note that reverberates through the sympathetic strings and across the instrument in a soft ghostly ring, reminiscent of the celestial wash you hear when playing the undamped top octave of a piano.