B.C. musician expands repertoire with this strange, sometimes slimy instrument | CBC News

On Thursday morning, folk musician Daniel Lapp took a walk on the beach, in search of the perfect piece of bull kelp. 

Bull kelp is long seaweed with an onion-like bulb at the end. For Lapp’s purposes, he needed something full of colour and freshly washed up on the shore — anything too old wouldn’t work. 

Then, he cut a hole with his carving knife, and created a mouthpiece. 

Lapp has been using kelp to make musical instruments. 

“Every kelp is different,” he told On The Island host Gregor Craigie, as he shared his morning’s work.

It works similarly to brass instruments, Lapp said.

“In all the early music, like Bach and Haydn, the trumpets didn’t have valves. They were natural trumpets.”

Because the kelp doesn’t have a valve, he adjusts the notes using his embouchure — the position of the lips, facial muscles and teeth that, when adjusted, can change the notes and sounds on some instruments. 

To play, he wraps the long kelp around him like a sousaphone. It sounds a bit like an airy alpenhorn.

“It’s quite fun,” Lapp said. 

This isn’t the only instrument made from kelp: in South Africa, the Lekgodilo flute is made of dried kelp, and dates back thousands of years. 

Lapp, who grew up in Prince George, B.C., started playing music as a child. He plays a number of different instruments, including the fiddle and trumpet, and now he can add bull kelp to the list.

He said he’s considered playing bull kelp as part of his shows in Victoria, but isn’t sure how to work it into a performance without knowing what key the plant will be in.

“I can’t compose ahead of time, but I thought I might start doing some popular tunes, maybe adding some synth tracks behind it and some nice sort of drum loops or something like that,” he said with a laugh.