Tapestry of the Commons Theme

The Tapestry Theme Music Instruments - Built and Played by Leon Schneiderman

Leon Schneiderman was a member of the theater group Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo and a founding of Oingo Boingo. During the group's early years he built original instruments and most of the sets, costumes, and theatrical devices, which contributed to the group's memorable and unique shows. He played saxophone with the group and continued to do so through most of the rock and roll years that followed.

In the mid-nineties Leon moved to the Mendocino coast near Point Arena. He joined the nonprofit that restored the historic Arena Theatre and served on that board for seven years before joining the film group for five years that showed movies in that same venue.
Since then he has been sculpting, building and playing musical instruments, and tending his garden.

These are some of the instruments heard in the Tapestry of the Commons Theme.

The balafon is an African instrument similar to a marimba. This one I built to a=440 for use with western instruments. In Africa they are built in a variety of scales for different musical uses, often in a pentatonic scale.

The bundtophone is a set of cake pans with different notes. This one shown has an optional hot plate attachment.

The metaliphones shown are all in progress on temporary frames. They are all derived from scrap metal of sorts and tuned by different methods. I aim to make them in chromatic scales, but manufactured parts and scrap are often limited in their tuning range by their properties. The discs cover an octave and these seven were assembled on the frame for this piece of music.