Build your own stringed instrument at Leaf

We hate do-it-yourself at the best of the times. Ask us to replace a picture rail or knock together an MDF chest of drawers from Ikea and we’ll genuinely have a nervous breakdown. When it comes to building our own, lovingly-crafted instrument in one of our favourite spaces though, that’s a different matter.

In April, Ben Duvall from Liverpool’s best modern-classical-pop-composition-whatever band Ex-Easter Island Head is organising a day of workshopping with a difference. Leaf on Bold Street will play host to Yuri Landman, a former comic artist and musician who’s the master maker behind unique instruments for bands like Sonic Youth, Melt Banana and every decent avant garde composer worth their salt.

The two workshops will enable you to to build one of two stringed instruments - a smaller ‘trichord’ or a larger ‘home swinger’ (pictured). Have a peek at the YouTube video below, taken from one of Yuri’s London workshops last year.

All looks rather fun doesn’t it? Kind of like GCSE woodwork except not completely awful. Best of all, the price you pay is per instrument made, rather than per person. So you can club together with a couple of mates and all help, or cry about how terrible you are at making things (er, that’ll be us). Don’t miss.

Yuri Landman workshops
Leaf, Bold Street, Liverpool
2nd April from 3pm
£110 for the home swinger, £30 for triochord workshop
Registration needed - more info over at the Facebook page