Sam Tasker '01 was playing the "cupola." Robin Palit '03 was on funnel. Kristin Herman '01 was beating time with plastic jugs full of, among other things, trail mix and rusty nails.

The likes of Steinway and Stradivari might have been uneasy in their graves that day.

But these students were producing real music. And in crafting their homemade "found object" instruments-the cupola, for instance, was fashioned of cups and plastic spoons duct-taped to a board-they had learned a lot about the physical facts of music-making.

Members of the unconventional trio were students in Paul Burgett's fall-semester Adventures in Music class. It's one of two courses-the other is in physics-that require students to construct musical instruments from scratch as a way of exploring the physics behind the creation of sound.

"They get to build either a percussion or wind instrument," says Burgett, University dean of students and instructor of the music course. "They're making everything from French horns out of garden hoses and funnels, to a pipe organ contraption with a working keyboard and bellows." \

David Douglass, professor of physics and astronomy, heads up the physics class, which makes flutes.

"I used to just have the students design flutes from pipes, but a few years ago, a music major asked, 'How do you know that they really work?' So I figured we'd better have a concert to find out."

The students in both classes work throughout the semester to machine their instruments, learning about how sound is produced, amplified, and given tone and pitch.

The music students learn to better understand the tools of their profession, and the physics students learn first-hand about designing complex devices.

Once the makeshift instruments are built and tested, the musicians split into small ensembles of three or four to learn how their music-makers work together.

"This way they begin to understand how the varying sounds of different instruments strengthen or weaken each other," Burgett says.

While the physicists entertained with the likes of "Jingle Bells" and "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel" at a departmental holiday party, the students in the music class were readying their hubcaps, plungers, and garden hoses for their own recital of semi-impromptu music. (They aren't required to write a whole composition but are asked to outline a piece that exploits their instruments' strengths and then to improvise to the best of their abilities.)

According to one observer, the cupola trio's selection sounded "vaguely tribal."

That effect, explained Herman, was the result of their improvisation.

"We sat around making different sounds, and then things just worked themselves out."