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Flows drop degrees, all my clothes got the scent of trees\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I lay back and blow sax like Kenny G<\/em><\/p>\n \u2014\u201cHeavenly Devine,\u201d Jus Allah,\u00a0Jedi Mind Tricks<\/em><\/p>\n Musical instruments exist on an ever-shifting cool continuum:\u00a0Electric guitars are cool as hell\u2014not as cool as they were at \u201cpeak electric guitar\u201d in 1984[*]\u2014but still undeniably cool; tubas are objectively lame, and scientists confirm they always have been[\u2020]. Then there\u2019s the saxophone, which defies cool categorization: It rides the razor\u2019s edge between cool and cringe, like Pee Wee Herman dancing across a bar top to the roaring, guttural groove of a crunchy baritone sax riff\u2014Tequila<\/em>, anyone?<\/p>\n With its iridescent, shimmering gold body and obsidian-hued keys to match the tar-black interior of its perfectly flared bell, it may not look like any other saxophone you\u2019ve ever seen, but Etai Rahmil<\/a>\u2019s latest glass creation absolutely does look like a saxophone. That\u2019s no accident: It\u2019s a two-foot-tall scale replica of an actual saxophone that Rahmil meticulously diagrammed before painstakingly hand fabricating each piece of its arabesque anatomy over a 5,300-degree torch flame.<\/p>\n \u201cI always purchase the instrument I\u2019m replicating\u2014I had a real saxophone sitting in front of me,\u201d Rahmil says. \u201cI took out a sharpie and started numbering the order pieces had to go on over each other\u2026that saxophone I made was such a puzzle.\u201d<\/p>\n Smokeable Creations<\/strong><\/p>\n From the unmistakable sweeping curvature of the bell and elbow to the mechanical intricacies\u2014including the ligature holding the reed into the mouthpiece\u2014each glittering glass component represents a victory of the artist\u2019s vision over the obstacles presented by his notoriously frail and fickle chosen medium; the sum is a glimmering triumph of imagination exceeding the limitations of Newtonian physics.<\/p>\n Also\u2014and I really can\u2019t stress this enough\u2014you can smoke\u00a0weed<\/em>\u00a0out of it.<\/p>\n Go watch the 1987 film\u00a0The Lost Boys<\/em>, specifically the scene with an oily, shirtless Tim Cappello belting out sexually charged saxophone pyrotechnics to the backdrop of teenage vampires embroiled in high-stakes romantic rivalry on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Until recently, there was broad scientific consensus that it was mathematically impossible for that scene to be any cooler.<\/p>\n Rahmil\u2019s research has revealed that if Cappello had ended that scene by taking a massive rip of chronic from the bell of his sax, it would have made the whole film roughly ten billion times cooler.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t play them, but you can smoke out of them,\u201d Rahmil says. \u201cHopefully, that\u2019ll help you hear music more clearly. I feel like I\u2019m trying to change the function\u2014not just making something out of glass just to make it out of glass.\u201d<\/p>\n That fusion of form and function doesn\u2019t occur naturally; it\u2019s the product of countless hours spent honing the foundational techniques of your craft.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took a few good years for me to be where I had the confidence to create what\u2019s in my head with my hands\u2014there\u2019s a steep learning curve at first,\u201d Rahmil says. \u201cWhen I started, I was making marbles, little pendants and stuff like that. As soon as you start to learn more technique, it very quickly gets way more frustrating because you have all these ideas that your hands can\u2019t quite do yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Honing the Craft<\/strong><\/p>\n Listen to John Coltrane\u2019s saxophone work on\u00a0Giant Steps;\u00a0<\/em>it\u2019s impossible not to be stunned by the effortless sounding grace and expressivity of each note, the way the music seems to\u00a0just\u00a0<\/em>burble forth from the bell of that sax. But there\u2019s no\u00a0just\u00a0<\/em>to it at all; it\u2019s the result of a process known as\u00a0woodshedding,\u00a0<\/em>which Coltrane was a fervent practitioner of. It\u2019s not just practicing your instrument for hours and hours and hours\u2014although that\u2019s the central tenant of it\u2014it\u2019s the deeply humbling, vaguely monastic process of isolating yourself into the confines of your craft, confronting your artistic weaknesses and hammering them into strengths through sheer force of creative will and commitment.<\/p>\n Fellow artists can always tell when a \u201ccat\u2019s been shedding,\u201d and like a sax player religiously drilling riffs and scales for hours on end, Rahmil has honed his craft, cocooned in the inspired isolation of the obsessed artist\u2014it shows at every level of his masterful work.<\/p>\n \u201cGlass has become a language I know as well as English,\u201d he says. \u201cPlanning out a pipe for success always starts with me, in my mind, going through every one of the thousands of steps.\u201d<\/p>\n Rahmil is deeply passionate about music\u2014he says he believes it\u2019s\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0universal language\u2014and he channels that passion into a fascinatingly fastidious celebration of the unique physical form of whatever instrument he\u2019s trying to capture in glass.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always had music in my family,\u201d Rahmil says. \u201cMy mom is a singer-songwriter, my grandparents are jazz musicians and my brother was a drummer. Growing up, I tried to find an instrument I could play and be good at, but it never happened.\u00a0So, making instruments with glass was the way I could connect with people through music, even if I\u2019m not making music myself.\u201d<\/p>\n Some artists might find satisfaction in discovering a niche as Rahmil has, but he says he\u2019s always striving to expand the scope and vision of his work. He doesn\u2019t want to feel confined by the replica work that\u2019s earned him so much recognition. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe trumpet is probably what I\u2019m most known for\u2014I\u2019ve made 11 of them so far. I was getting tired of doing the replication thing, making everything to the millimeter,\u201d he says. \u201cI have a really good time making up re-imagined instruments\u2014combining multiple instruments into one piece. I\u2019ve also started to explore stringed instruments, which has been really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n Rahmil isn\u2019t done chasing his vision, he says, and he\u2019s got some genuinely ambitious ideas waiting in the wings. Chief among them, a full-scale grand piano replica which, of course, will also be a functional pipe. The idea of milking and clearing a grand piano sized pipe is tantalizing, but many would agree\u2014it\u2019s all about the sax.<\/p>\n All other considerations aside, the saxophone already resembles a huge, mutant \u201cSherlock\u201d pipe to begin with. Rahmil seems to confirm this sentiment. \u201cThe brass always comes back,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u201cTheir shapes are just so translatable to glass. All the tubes and valves\u2014I look at them and I\u2019m like, \u2018that needs to be a pipe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s right of course\u2014the brass always comes back. From enduring jazz standards to the vaguely ironic cultural resurgence of Steely Dan, all the way to the timeless siren song allure of pure cheese, like the unmistakable wailing riffs at the heart of \u201cCareless Whisper\u201d\u00a0<\/em>or \u201cBaker Street\u201d<\/em>\u2014sax addiction endures, and with Rahmil\u2019s latest creation, it just got a little harder to say no.<\/p>\n [*]\u00a0In 1984, Van Halen released the album,\u00a01984,\u00a0<\/em>which featured singles \u201cHot for Teacher\u201d and \u201cPanama\u201d representing some of the\u00a0gnarliest riffage<\/em>\u00a0ever recorded on planet Earth. However, it also marked Eddie Van Halen\u2019s discovery of the synthesizer, which broadened the band\u2019s appeal with hits such as \u201cJump,\u201d but also deemphasized his guitar virtuosity as the sonic tent pole of the band\u2019s sound, creating a high water mark for the cool factor of electric guitars, but also signaling the beginning of the end for guitars cultural hegemony as the musical cool superpower.<\/p>\n [\u2020]\u00a0Thought experiment: Imagine a drummer. Now imagine a tuba player. Which one are you asking to find weed for you if you can only ask one? This is basic science.<\/p>\n This story was originally published in issue 50 of the\u00a0print edition<\/a>\u00a0of Cannabis Now.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Glass Artist Crafts Smokable Pipes That Look Exactly Like Musical Instruments<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Flows drop degrees, all my clothes got the scent of trees\u00a0 I lay back and blow sax like Kenny G \u2014\u201cHeavenly Devine,\u201d Jus Allah,\u00a0Jedi Mind Tricks Musical instruments exist on an ever-shifting cool continuum:\u00a0Electric guitars are cool as hell\u2014not as cool as they were at \u201cpeak electric guitar\u201d in 1984[*]\u2014butContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":75762,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,99,532,85,17725,89,636],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75761"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75763,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75761\/revisions\/75763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Etai-Rahmil-glass-art-musical-instrument-cello.jpg\")
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\nRead More: Glass Artist Crafts Smokable Pipes That Look Exactly Like Musical Instruments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"