The birth of the Kiboé is a miracle in itself. It was  kind of a self - creating  phenomenon, hence there was no plan or construction manual in the first place.

One day I was testing a few contact-microphones, tiny little pick-ups designed to catch the sound of everything from pianos, waterbuckets or violins to cigar packets or plastic-cans. At that time I was envolved in an electric-acoustic project at the University of Oldenburg called E-Werk. 

Well, to check the function of these mics I glued a couple of them underneath my little table as can be seen here:  

I was really excited when I heard the amplified sound of a breakfast or the melting of sugar crystals in a cup of tea or the rattle of a knife at the edge of the table. Everybody who came for a visit had  to smile and immediately started  playing around the table and experimenting with the sounds you could create  just by touching it.               

 Since I´m a guitarplayer it´s kind of natural to experiment and fix some strings to the table by drilling a few holes into the surface and putting  some sort of string-holders at one side and some others opposite.  For some  reason, these strings were fixed the longest possible way, which meant diagonally across the table.  And eventually there were twelve strings of different lengths tightened on half of the surface,  making it possible to play scales and melodies.

The next idea was to divide the strings by little bridges  one inch tall, and so double the amount of notes and make it possible to set different intervals to the strings.  This way, I discovered that the criss cross tuning affected a particular order of the notes positioned above each other.        After trying out in a few sessions at home , I wanted to take it to a friend´s place but, as taking the entire table was not a prtactical option, I took the saw and cut it into two equal shaped triangular pieces, one of it equipped with 12 strings.

This last cut gave the Kiboé  its final triangle form and later, after having played it several times in several places , I decided to build a real, professional version of this instrument and add a few electronical devices like echoes and chorus, which enlarged the range of sounds a lot and also increased the fun factor.

One day at the marinas of Berkeley, California in 1988 there was this black fellow-musician and sax player who persuaded me to take this thing more seriously and put some effort into the patenting and manufacturing . But although I really did it and tried to find a manufacturer or people who know how to deal with that sort of thing I didn´t succeed, because it would have exceeded my talents and spread my energies too much.( But still I am open to realistic ideas in terms of marketing a new musical instrument ).

When I ran into Waduda, the A&R manager of New Earth Records, one day in 1993 while I was spending some time in Osho´s Resort in Pune, India, I got the chance to publish a few tunes played on the Kiboé. The result was a CD  full of  softly floating music smoothly supported by Nic Tyndall´s synthesizers. Another one followed two years later and both were recommended by numerous  healing people for Reiki  treatments or initiations. I still like the "Healing Hands" CD for chilling out to every once in a while.

the KIBOÉ	"REIKI Healing Hands"  first released CD
"Touch of Love"	and the latest release " REIKI essence"

                                         available at www.newearthrecords.com  or in any recordstore

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