![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/walnut-brain-diddley-bow-2025-12-13-1024x683.jpg\")
Walnut Brain\u2019s Alina Josan playing her hand-built diddley bow. (Courtesy of Walnut Brain)<\/p>\nWalnut Brain\u2019s earliest rumblings<\/p>\n
All you need to make a diddley bow is a piece of wood, a bottle, a nail and a string. The crude instrument has strong roots in the earliest iterations of blues music. And it contributes to the outsider flavor of their sound.<\/p>\n
In 2024, after a few attempts at learning how to play instruments, Josan asked herself, \u201cWhat if I just make myself an instrument and figure out how to play it?\u201d So she built one from a single guitar string stretched across two cans.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, a one-string instrument is essentially my first instrument,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Scraping and banging on the string with a mix of bows, sticks, jars, and using a battery as a slide, she began by \u201cjust trying to make something new,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
They ran into problems with her first iteration. After banging on the string for a couple minutes, the cans would shift and the tone would change, making it too hard for Heise to play along. In its next generation, the instrument included a tuning peg borrowed from a guitar.<\/p>\n
Walnut Brain\u2019s Alina Josan playing her hand-built diddley bow. (Courtesy of Walnut Brain)<\/p>\n
Improvisation and repetition form the backbone of Walnut Brain\u2019s music. They avoid structure on purpose. They both credit the legendary avant-garde musician and philosopher Henry Flynt, especially his \u201cBack Porch Hillbilly Blues\u201d and \u201cViolin Strobe,\u201d with shaping their taste for long hypnotic stretches.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll kind of, like, bend the string,\u201d Josan said. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve figured out that I have a whole little bag of tricks of things to do. But again, I\u2019m not professionally trained, so I don\u2019t really know how to explain what I\u2019m doing. I just have to remember how I achieved a certain sound.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heise no longer tunes his guitar conventionally. He said he was bored with \u201cplaying the same things,\u201d so to keep the music exciting for himself, he uses \u201crandom alternate tunings\u201d as a way to get different sounds.<\/p>\n
After Josan establishes a rhythm, whatever it might be, Heise joins in on his electric guitar. He said he gravitates toward rhythms and beats, even in their most esoteric experimental music.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of our jams start a little loose, and then at some point we lock in together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Josan said she loves the moment when they snap into sync.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really fun when I notice we\u2019re locked in,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The duo will record with Emily Robb in December. They say they\u2019re excited \u2014 and curious to hear what their improvisation will sound like in someone else\u2019s environment.<\/p>\n
They recently marked the anniversary of Walnut Brain\u2019s creation by once again heading to a cabin with their gear and recording equipment. The nascent duo have the potential to reach an untold number of new fans, but they approach the thought of their future with a touch of humility. \u201cIt\u2019s fun to play music together,\u201d Josan says. \u201cIt\u2019s really cool if other people like it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Walnut Brain\u2019s earliest rumblings All you need to make a diddley bow is a piece of wood, a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":445432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,205146,1448,2830,205147,1311,205148,205149,205150,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-445431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-experimental-music","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-petty-bunco","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-philadelphia-music-scene","15":"tag-psychedelic-music","16":"tag-underground-music","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115715239865253763","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}