As you may know, Du makes his own didgeridoos. He has been for some years now. Ever since it happened that when he decided to buy didgeridoo he just could not find any instrument that satisfied his playing needs. And since these instruments became very much a mirror of his own views on playing and, in a way, unique, Du decided to open a small high-end didgeridoo boutique and tube museum. Where everything is about quality, music, details, sounds, experiments, beauty. Didgeridoos are his life passion and I think you will be able to feel that in the new didge cosmic space he is preparing. Very soon it will be open for visitors at this address: www.duendedidgeridoo.com

It will be a small landscape where you will be able to buy didgeridoo-like instruments, but also many articles on didgeridoo playing and philosophy, didgeridoo making, audio-samples and videos. The aim is to spread the knowledge about this both simple and complex instrument. And give some other passionate didgeridoo seekers a possibility to play on instruments of the highest quality that are capable of being the ultimate teachers. A possibility Du himself longed for in the years of active development of his techniques and music worlds.
Well…
you will be able to experience it BY yourself and possibly buy didgeridoo FOR yourself.

Check soon on the deep deep moon;-)  at www.duendedidgeridoo.com

I would like to tell you a story of a didgeridoo creature a bit neglected by its surrounding, but with some qualities so amazing that it solely can reach some places of spaces.
It starts in the Earth environment, somewhere at the seaside where agaves grow. There was a stick so tiny and slick that it would surely be overlooked by a didgeridoo hunting man or woman who knows what she or he is doing. Fortunately, I did not know what I was doing, so I took it home. And as it is usually not the case it was on a surgery desk for making didgeridoo quite soon.
Now all the doctors in my head gathered, scratched their beard and murmured… What could this be… how to make a didgeridoo out of this? We played a lot of long sticks, but never so tiny as this…
And as presence and practice were the best teachers available, ever, at all times, there was a revealing and astonishing first blow. There was a very natural feeling of much greater resonance than one would expect from this little long stick. And the easy silky toots…
It is a 235cm long didgeridoo in F#. The first 8 toots of it are: A#, F#, C, E, G, A#, C#, E
It is nice to play acoustically, BUT where it really shines through are its amazing dances in front of a microphone. Yes, dances is a good word, this didge taught me a lot about various microphone usages and new possibilities of didgeridoo sound. It was first played on Korvo Eksaltiko, and it was really a revealing experience. I believe this didgeridoo, called The Needle didge because of its appearance, has strong place in didgeridoo spectrum.
In short, it has very very nice bass which is deep and can be articulated well. It has enormous crazibilites of toots. The timbre is special and nice, non obtrusive, but powerful. It has smaller dynamic range which suits close miking better. The instrument is dynamically inert in the best sense of it. It can go, but only when you press acceleration pedal hard. There is no way to hurt yourself, microphone, or somebody in the audience accidentally. And it is still in the size that can fit in most places.
I tried to make a copy of it for travelling, but I missed one toot a bit. You could say no big deal, but it puts me to minor scale instead of major, so it can be a big deal, or it can be not, depending on what you want. But I realized many things from and about this instrument, and it will be found in the stories to come…
The point of this little story lies in the fact that something completely new cannot be in something already well known. Things come in their forms unexpectedly, and they do ask for some attention to be discovered….
Well… you know… how it goes… I wish you good luck.

Many things are changing in the didgeridoo world. I notice more and more players enjoy the richness of the deep didgeridoo underworld. I have some new ideas, and works about it, so hopefully it will inspire you in some way that will surprise me later.
There are two aspects what I would like to talk about.
The Joint and The Model.
Since the beginning of my long didgeridoo journey, like everyone who has done it, I’ve had a question how to assemble didgeridoos together. Of course, this is solvable in many ways, and some are much better than the other.
Let’s see the list of things that must be respected.
1. The point is that we can release the joint and disassemble the didge
2. The joint must be airtight
3. It must be either firm enough not to break when force is applied on one end, or flexible
4. Visually acceptable for live performances. So no nude people holding your didgeridoo tight.
5. Doable in reasonable amount of time, otherwise you lose the will to practice or perform.

So far I’ve done it in at least 4 different ways…
First. The tape joint. That is very simple to do, and it works. It is good that it is like that so anyone can try deep didges, not only (successful) rocket scientists.
Second. I made an epoxy/fiberglass joint. For a C didge i played in intro of Storytellingstories. Of course the joint wasn’t perfect enough and I still had to use tape. Only this time, only very little.
Third. The screws joint. It was done for the 10 meter didgeridoo for Storytellingstories. It had some rubber for sealing the joint. But it still needed some tape at some places. And the problem was that the joint was breaking under huge mass of 10 meter didgeridoo. So the whole didge had to be supported on many places during and after assembly.
Fourth. The inox joint. The new joint. It seems to work.

To do the model with some sense demanded a certain amount of didgeridoo experience.

But what does it take to make a deep instrument. Let’s do a little maths.
Let’s say (define) deep didgeridoo is the one which has a basic drone about an octave below “normal” didgeridoo and has at least one toot that sounds like a ‘normal’ didgeridoo. First point of deep instruments where I found it reaches some acoustical satisfaction is around 4 meters. The shape of it is around 20cm at the bell. If you look at that instrument, it has about 3 times the length, 2 times the width in both directions. 3×2x2 = 12 times bigger volume than “normal” didge. So you have to take off and dig out 12 times more wood…How does it sound? It sounds like you will not have many of those didges to try.
So what I did at some point, I took my collection of didgeridoos and made almost every possible joint that made even a bit sense. I found only three didges that made sense. But one made especially lots of sense. It is the combination of g/g# didgeridoo (long conical) I often play  in a duo with Marko Ritoša (Kongoh, Rescribi, Ljubičasto), and the fourth wooden part of 10 meter didgeridoo, a big resonator box. I will not go in details now why I like this sound so much, but I will give you an example;
Arhanđeo svega čudnog
Do you understand?

I have thought about it before, but the final impulse was the gig at JT festival, where I could not go by car, and I do not take my “original” didges to planes. The idea was to copy it, but intentionally not perfectly- otherwise I can’t learn enough from it. I had a bit more work that I thought it would be. For example, I decided to do a perfect joint without going to a metal turner. And it took me three days of work. I found out one thing; inox is sort of a HARDISH material. A bit resistant to any physical changes. So I first changed the his mentality, explaining him that he will be a very important “sound holder”- and this, off course,  is why this joint now works.

The sound. Well – it is what i hoped for. Very similar quality. Bit different sound properties. I still have some work to make it proper, and some ideas that I hope that will work that would make it more versatile. I will need a bit of Heaven’s help and it will be done in no-time.

I will present the sound when the tube comes from the workshop as I have no mean to record there properly.

Oh look! Colours!
Fantastic.

This is a little didgeridoo making story which you are likely to buy because it is on discount. Our storyshop is running out of storage space, so we make drastic moves. This one is on discount because it is true.

There was this other day around, but recently, when I wanted to carve out something of two eucalyptus boards. A sound container in a way. For experiments. Of course.
So I took a mallet and a chisel and started to wake the neighborhood up. I was expelled from my previous workshop, so now I am making instruments, monstruments and related stuff in one room in a flat.
I started to feel kind of bad because I was near the window, at the aim of a sniper of a neighbor with low opinion on midnight art. But also the work was going very slow.  At some point the my inside head bulb lighted in a most peculiar light
I thought I should try chiseling with long chisel I use for chiseling deep inside didgeridoos. It is a very sharp 2 meter long, rather heavy chisel I made for myself as present one day. My favourite.
I am not exaggerating when I say I was around five times faster with it. I’ve always felt very natural working with it, but I have not have expected this. So instead of working with 30cm chisel and being close to the work, I was 2 meters away, doing it many times faster, the only factor reducing my speed and accuracy was poor light.

I try to be present in the processes I do, to experience them for what they really are. They are often amazing, magnificent in their nature (for any human being, not just me). I look for hidden, not obvious connections and reasons. Why do I play like I do? Why did this rhythm or that melody come to my mind? Is it something that was in the air or in the blood?
This situation reminds me very much of only one thing which I never have done. Using spears. Humans have been doing that for eons, much longer than using forks and spoons I guess. So maybe if you discover that you feel much more natural to eat with two meter long kitchen accessories, my theory might be right!
Be sure to let me know. And by that time I am going to experiment with an arm-long tooth brush. Actually, now the advantages of very long toilet brush comes in mind…
I will make a list.