REQUIREMENTS: Several stemmed wine and water glasses, brandy snifters and other common stem-ware of various wall thickness, sizes and shapes. A gallon of water. A pitcher and/or a kitchen turkey baster for transferring water to and from the glasses to adjust their tuning. A shallow dish of water in which to soak clean fingers. A sponge and cloth towels to clean up spills and dry hands. A nice adjunct is a standard tuning fork, pitchpipe or nearby piano to help determine accurate musical pitch.

WARNING: Do not use leaded crystal goblets. It is possible (though undocumented) that the "nervous side-effects" referred to above were noticed by glass musicians after prolonged practice and performance on their instruments causing absorption of elemental lead through their fingers.

THE SECRET: The musical tone that can be drawn from a stemmed glass or goblet is obtained by rubbing a wet finger around the rim of the glass. Almost any relatively thin-walled glass will produce the tone, but a stemmed glass is better since the foot of the glass has no part in tone production and therefore can be used to steady the glass and hold it down. If the vibrating side-walls of a glass are touched it will damp the vibration and therefore the tone. The finger(s) that rub the glass rim must be absolutely clean and free from grease or skin oils. The player should wash her/his hands prior to playing and dry them with a cloth towel. Ideally the soap used for washing the fingertips should be a detergent used for hand-washing of dishes - preferably not the "friendly-to-your-hands" type. Unperfumed bar soap such as "Ivory" is a second choice. A third alternative is to soak the fingers in a dish of water for a short time, then to dry them vigorously with a cloth towel to abrade away any latent skin oils. The point is any grease or oil on the fingers will lubricate and therefore defeat the "stick-slip" action of fingers on glass that creates the initial "squeak" which then becomes a sustained musical tone with continuing finger motion around the rim of the glass. (They don't call it "squeaky clean" for nothing)!

WHAT TO DO: Fill a stemmed glass about one half way with room temperature tap water. Hold the glass steady by its "foot" and rub a clean wet finger evenly around its rim at moderate speed. If a continuous musical tone is not immediately produced, increase finger pressure. It sometimes takes a few moments of trying to find the right combination of finger pressure and speed to produce a tone. Once the tone is found it is a little like riding a bicycle, you never forget! Once the musical tone is produced empty the glass and try again. Does the glass still "sing?" If it does produce a tone is the pitch higher or lower? Now fill the glass nearly to the rim. How does the pitch change? Do other qualities (such as loudness, timbre or ease of tone production of the tone change? Check out the surface of the water in the glass. What is happening? How does the size of a glass affect the pitch it produces? If you have glasses of radically different thicknesses how does this affect tone production? If you have a wide enough selection of sizes it may be possible to tune them with various depths of water into a chromatic scale (thirteen half steps from one note to the same note an octave above or below) or a diatonic scale (eight steps from one octave to the next, most commonly thought of as an ascending scale: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti and do).

VARIATIONS: Normally a glass harmonicist will have a chromatically or diatonically tuned set of glasses permanently secured to a board or in a box. Various approaches have been used including tieing the feet of the glasses to the base with elastic (such as "bungee" cord or stretched rubber balloons -- simple rubber bands are not strong enough to hold them securely) or more elaborate schemes such as epoxy gluing the glasses down. Since neither of these stratagems may be practical in a class room perhaps a lesson in teamwork is in order. Several students on one side of a table can hold down a glass with each hand while the player or players work from the other side of the table. If enough glasses are available that can be tuned to a scale (or significant part of one) perhaps simple tunes can be played. Try "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," "The Itsy, Bitsy Spider" or "I'm a Little Tea Pot." With access to a full octave someone may be able to play other familiar songs such as "Amazing Grace."

Peter (The Glassman) Bennett
website: www.glassharper.com
email: glassharper@hotmail.com
1000 Bourbon St. #290
New Orleans, LA 70116
504-481-4987