(stubbs) timbre is connected with musical instruments mostly by structure of the instrument and the materialst the instrument is made from. it's significant that musical instruments use precious natural materials from all over the world, and many times these were living materials like the sinews or guts from different animals. wood is my main medium. i've been working wood most of my life. and an instrument-maker tries to figure out which of the design aspects of an instrument are mutable and which have to be preserved. and an instrument-maker will change something about an instrument every time they build that instrument, but they will leave certain other things alone. in making my own nay, i experiment with wall thickness, with the size of the tone holes, with the shape of the embouchure, with very small, tiny little measurements in order to generate different kinds of tone. [airy tones] nay is a persian term meaning simply pipe. and nays in various forms appear from north africa all the way to western china in very many different kinds of forms. and the nay that i play is associated with t