The Instrumentarium
New! Keyboards made in stainless steel!
The efforts of the BASCHET brothers to turn their findings into a play and educational tool, took shape thanks to the collaboration of a team always enriched with skills, intuitions, experiences, for a plurality of public, and this in many different circumstancies.
"It’s experience which has lead us to this creation and particularly the fact that we worked in New York in the 1970s, in a programme called « Learning through the arts ». The designs were finalised only after nearly 10 years of practice and, to get there, we had to work ourselves with thousands of children from different countries.
The sounds do not have a very precise frequency. For this reason, their combination is not organised according to their height but rather according to a juxtaposition of tones. We had the same attitude as the one of concrete music composers around 1950, using sounds created on magnetic tape and non-indexable classically.
We were impressed with the easiness with which contemporary plastic arts were assimilated in some sectors of education : in nursery schools particularly, children are given colours. They are free to cast them on the canvas and through this to cast their internal images. In this way, little by little, they learn to structure their work and structure themselves.
We wanted to give children sound colours and the freedom to play without reproducing."
Bernard BASCHET
Les Cahiers du CENAM
The BASCHET's instrumentarium was immediately honoured by the pedagogical community. Example taken from human evolution, bringing the Homo-Faber from the Homo-Ludins to the Homo-Sapiens, the BASCHET brothers engrave their educational will in the mists of time.
Technical characteristics
The BASCHET instrumentarium is made of 14 sound structures of which the function is essentially play and educational.
These sound structures are sound metallic keyboards made of rods, plates and strings, which are placed on amplification cones. The sound is generated by different manners of playing : percussion, rubbing, sliding. The keyboards are monotone or multitone.
These sound structures offer a preformed1 sound (tone and frequency), allowing the intrumentist to immediately obtain a harmonious sound in response to a musical gesture of an inaccurate nature. In this way a great liberty towards the instrument and the playing of it appears.
Dimensions :
Maximum height (candelabra) : 1m20 / Dimensions of the keyboards 50x50cm.
Easy to stock, to dismantle, to carry.
1 a piano note is preformed, a tambourine one is not.
Creating a desire to play / to express oneself
- Plastic
- Sound quality
- Direct sound of the gesture in all its variations
- Use of the object as a whole
- Cultural stamp / connection with the sounds of instruments worldwide
- Intermodality of perceptions – aural, visual, tactile (metal, glass, water, polymers, composite materials)
- Creation of sound objects following from simple sound gestures
Participating in the structuring of language
- Motor activity / psychomotor development
- Keyboards inducing musical gestures : horizontal, vertical, curved and circular shapes
- Continual or partial organisation
- Non-verbal mean of communicating
- Coding of sound creations
More information related to the BASCHET pedagogy is available in the Library section.
Download the Instrumentarium catalogue :