Rattletrap becomes real music to his ears

With nearly 200,000 miles on the odometer, the dented and rusting 1982 Honda Accord produced so many clunks, rattles and whines that Milbrodt, a New Jersey-based composer, wouldn't even consider trading it in.

However, Milbrodt was intrigued by the assortment of musical and not-so-musical noises emanating from the junker and came up with a unusual idea -- why not make music out of the car instead of sending it to a junkyard.

Musikfest patrons will be able to hear the musical result of that 12-year-old notion when Milbrodt brings his Car Music Project to Musikfest's Banana Island at 4:30 p.m. Friday.

Milbrodt and his band will perform his original music on some of the 65 instruments ingeniously crafted from the car parts scavenged from Milbrodt's old Honda.

"It sounds crazy and it looks crazy," says Milbrodt. "It's like a Dr. Seuss musical menagerie of metal."

Milbrodt, an established composer of commercial and TV music who won an Emmy Award in 1991 for his electronic score for the short film "American Venus," says he took his car to a garage and in eight hours a crew of five mechanics had completely dismantled it from the roof supports to the pistons.

Milbrodt took the pile of what most people would call junk to his friend and aspiring metal sculptor, Ray Faunce III, and challenged him to create instruments.

"I told him I wanted playable instruments representing the four families of the orchestra -- brass, wind, strings and percussion," Milbrodt says.

Aided by the collaboration of Milbrodt and other friends that included an engineer, glass cutter and musicians, Faunce built more than 50 instruments over an 18-month period.

What evolved include unlikely music makers such as a strutbone, a brass instrument made from McPherson struts and shifter linkage that plays like a trombone; tube flutes, that are made from air conditioning tubes and trailing arms that play like a recorder; and a tank bass, made from a gas tank with a neck from a radiator support.

Milbrodt usually leads the band on the "air guitar," a stringed instrument made from an air cleaner and brake calipers that looks like a banjo but is fretless and played with metal finger slides.

The bulk of the car parts make up what Milbrodt calls the per"car"sion section. More than 55 percussion instruments are fashioned from gears, springs, pistons, wheel drums, springs and crankshafts.

A trunk drum is made from a drum head stretched across the trunk frame; cymbals are made from the car's floorboard, and a gong made from the car's hood "sounds like a thundersheet" Milbrodt says.

After the instruments were created, Milbrodt began to compose music to play on them. He says the instruments make different sounds from traditional instruments and he had to learn what sounds everything could make before he started composing. And he discovered playing the oddly shaped and sounding instruments was challenging.

"Fingering holes are not as precise and there are all kinds of bumps and dents on the necks of the stringed instruments," he says.

Most of the music Milbrodt has written for the Car Music Project with names like "Noodles," "Carbonation" and "Crenabulations No. 1." is a funky fusion of jazz and classical with a definite metallic sound.

"It's a lot of fun," says Milbrodt. "Half the fun is to get instruments to do what you want."

Joining Milbrodt onstage will be Wilbo Wright on tank bass; Dave Homan on convertible and tube flutes; James Spotto on strutphone and exhaustaphone and per"car"sionist William Trigg.

Milbrodt promises the Banana Island performance will be a family show geared toward younge audiences. He says a "show and tell" will follow in which children will be invited onstage to try some of the instruments.

"Children love to touch the instruments and try them," he says.