5 STRING VIOLA

5 STRING VIOLA

There ain’t no party like a Lagos party.

Or so they say. This weekend, Dazed flew out to Lagos, Nigeria for the third annual MTV Africa Music.

Awards and spent a few days and some late nights meeting rap, R&B and kuduro superstars from across Africa: names like Banky W, Fally Ipupa, Daddy Owen, Cabo Snoop and Radio & Weasel, from Angola to Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and beyond, all huge stars in their own countries, selling truckloads of records despite rampant piracy and a rickety music industry. These guys are kind of the Jay Zs and Snoops of Africa, basically.

There ain’t no party like a Lagos party.

Or so they say. This weekend, Dazed flew out to Lagos, Nigeria for the third annual MTV Africa Music.

Awards and spent a few days and some late nights meeting rap, R&B and kuduro superstars from across Africa: names like Banky W, Fally Ipupa, Daddy Owen, Cabo Snoop and Radio & Weasel, from Angola to Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and beyond, all huge stars in their own countries, selling truckloads of records despite rampant piracy and a rickety music industry. These guys are kind of the Jay Zs and Snoops of Africa, basically.

There ain’t no party like a Lagos party.

Or so they say. This weekend, Dazed flew out to Lagos, Nigeria for the third annual MTV Africa Music.

Awards and spent a few days and some late nights meeting rap, R&B and kuduro superstars from across Africa: names like Banky W, Fally Ipupa, Daddy Owen, Cabo Snoop and Radio & Weasel, from Angola to Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and beyond, all huge stars in their own countries, selling truckloads of records despite rampant piracy and a rickety music industry. These guys are kind of the Jay Zs and Snoops of Africa, basically.

There ain’t no party like a Lagos party.

Or so they say. This weekend, Dazed flew out to Lagos, Nigeria for the third annual MTV Africa Music.

Awards and spent a few days and some late nights meeting rap, R&B and kuduro superstars from across Africa: names like Banky W, Fally Ipupa, Daddy Owen, Cabo Snoop and Radio & Weasel, from Angola to Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and beyond, all huge stars in their own countries, selling truckloads of records despite rampant piracy and a rickety music industry. These guys are kind of the Jay Zs and Snoops of Africa, basically.

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Making Instruments Out Of Music

KEITH MEDLEY keith@keithmedleymusic.com

T: 615-389-5234

THE QUEST

This instrument became a quest one morning as I was scanning my wood pile for nothing specific in particular. That's when I noticed a piece of 2" maple with some dark heart wood running parallel with the blonde color we're used to seeing on most maple. At that moment I began to entertain the idea of a violin shape with a different visual.

So, keeping with the theme of lines and pointy-curvy shapes I'm fond of doing,

I used the lines on the cello I made several years ago and scaled it down to the overall length of my granddad's fiddle. As I started on the sketch the idea came to make it a viola scale but didn't want it to be that big of a solid wood instrument so I split the difference and placed the scale length somewhere in between a violin and viola. And by doing so it made perfect sense to do a 5 string which would give me the violin with the 4 smallest of the 5 strings, and also a viola with the 4 largest strings thereby having the best range of both worlds.

With the maple and 2 purple heart strips in parallel using a neck-thru design the swamp ash wings help it to be somewhat lighter in weight. In keeping with the instruments genre it was pessary to give a nod the stringed section by carving a subtle shape in the top and back. The fingerboard, chin rest, bridge assemble and of course the talon tailpiece are all of ebony. My little sun trademark my not be in the best of locations but at least it's visible.

KEITH MEDLEY MUSIC & ARTS