home • music/sound • sonic objects • consulting • press coverage • public speaking

Sonic Recycling In 2007, Bill Milbrodt was asked to produce a series of playable musical instruments, made from car parts, that would meet the requirements of a specific piece of classical music that had been composed for a commercial. They had to look good and had to play in tune. The commercial was to be named the Ford Focus Orchestra. The Ford Focus Orchestra project began when Biscuit Filmworks, a producer of television commercials, asked Bill Milbrodt if he could turn a car into playable musical instruments. Milbrodt had produced a similar project thirteen years earlier: He founded the Car Music Project, for which he had his own car reconstructed as musical instruments. Biscuit was working with Ogilvy Advertising (UK) on a rebranding of the British Ford Focus, Britain's most popular car. The Focus had been redesigned and Ford needed a commercial that would embed the car's elegant new look in the minds of European consumers. Biscuit's award-winning director, Noam Murro, took on the task. Murro needed instruments that could play a piece of classical music that had already been created in prototype form by composer Craig Richey. The instruments had to play in tune and look great. They also had to be ready to ship from the east coast to the west coast of the U.S. within about six weeks. Milbrodt agreed to do it. The process began. Milbrodt pulled together a team of about twenty-two people. Lead Designer/Fabricator Ray Faunce III was hired because of his experience designing and building the Car Music Project's instruments. Luthier Joe Zimmerman was hired to design and oversee the functional parts of the stringed instruments; particularly necks and fingerboards. The Car Music Project musicians -- William Trigg, Wilbo Wright, James Spotto, and Eric Haltmeier -- consulted on, and tested, the percussion, string, brass, and wind instruments respectively. Hot rod painter Stephen Novack joined the team to paint the instruments with colors specified by Ford. Mechanics were hired to dismantle a Ford Focus shipped from Europe to Milbrodt, in Pennsylvania. Additional people were hired to work with Faunce, day to day, on the hard work of metal fabrication. Milbrodt worked with composer Craig Richey to determine the kinds of instruments that would be needed to realize the music. At the same time, car parts were sorted, laid out side by side, and rearranged many times to determine what parts should be used for specific instruments. In all, Milbrodt and his team produced thirty-one playable Ford Focus instruments that include the Ford "Fender" Bass, Shockbone, Brake Booster/Clutch Guitar, Spike Fiddle, Front Bumper Wheel Drum, Dijeriduba, Steering Wheel Glass Crusher, Percussion Environment, and Transmission Case Cello-Dulcimer, among others. Ford Focus Orchestra was seen throughout Europe and in parts of Asia and Africa. It was featured in news reports on CNN, BBC radio and television, on CBS Sunday Morning (in the U.S.), and in European newspapers and magazines. Then, worldwide, blogs on the web began to generate a controversy ... Some people did not believe that the music they heard in the commercial was produced by the Ford Focus instruments. To put doubters to rest, Ford put the instruments on a four-week tour with live performances in three UK cities and a single performance at Royal Albert Hall, to raise funds for the Teenage Cancer Trust. Because the TCT is a charity supported by many British rock stars, some well known musicans became involved: Nick Mason of Pink Floyd, Kenny Jones of the Faces and the Who, and Mike Rutherford of Genesis. Playing the Ford Focus instruments, Rutherford and Jones produced a song, "Six O'Clock", with all proceeds donated to the TCT. Bill MIlbrodt started the Car Music Project in 1994 to "turn a car into music". He wanted unique instruments to realize his musical ideas and to convey a message about the possibilities and importance of recycling. He had his 1982 Honda Accord taken apart and reconstructed as playable musical instruments. The instruments represented the four instrument families of the traditional western orchestra: winds, brass, percussion, and strings. The car, with nearly 200,000 miles on its odometer, was (literally) worn out. Work began with hired mechanics who dismantled the car. Milbrodt hired Ray Faunce III, a metal sculptor, to create the instruments. He provided Faunce with a support team that included musicians, a glass cutter, an engineer, a physicist, and others. The instruments were tested and revised several times by Milbrodt's musicians but were, by normal musical standards, ultimately flawed. For example, the wind instruments had their finger holes aligned imperfectly. Similarly, the stringed instruments had fingerboards with dents, bends, and pits in the metal. These characteristics affected musicians' abilities to achieve consistent tuning. But it was here that Milbrodt saw an opportunity: create music that allows for tuning idiosyncrasies. He decided not to push for perfection. Milbrodt's thinking was that if someone wants a great guitar, they can buy one, so why use car parts to achieve what can be done better with traditional instruments? Instead, he began to write music that allowed for out-of-tune notes and would sound significantly different every time it was performed. The combination of Milbrodt's music and his imperfect car part instruments define the signature sound of the Car Music Project, his band, formed in 2005. Milbrodt categorizes the instruments in two ways. "Purebreds" are made purely from car parts except for the accessories that mount them. These include flutes and percussive items like springs. "Hybrid" instruments are instruments made from car parts plus musical instrument parts. These include instruments like the convertibles, with saxophone necks and mouthpieces, and the air guitar, with real guitar strings and tuning pegs. Milbrodt plays the air guitar, made from the air cleaner. Wilbo Wright plays the tank bass made from the gas tank.. James Spotto plays exhaustaphone and strutbone, both with brass mouthpieces, and made from the exhaust system and struts respectively. Eric Haltmeier plays two reed instruments called convertibles, made from trailing arms, strut covers, and saxophone parts. He also plays tube flutes made from smaller parts like air conditioning lines. William Trigg plays percarsion, consisting of about fifty-five individual car part instruments ranging from gears to windows, along with drums made from wheels and the trunk, and cymbals made from floorboards. For more information, please visit the official Car Music Project web site at www.carmusicproject.com.