Musician, Sculptor, Inventor

In 1990 Carl founded Rhythms From The Heart Inc. — the organizational home for his music, his instruments, and his broader creative work. The name reflects the spirit behind everything he makes: rhythm as a living, felt thing, not merely a technical exercise.

His work sits at the intersection of sculpture, music, natural materials, and interactive art. The instruments he builds are not reproductions of existing forms. They are original objects that happen to make sound — or, depending on how you look at it, original sounds that happen to take sculptural form.

Carl's parallel profession was architecture. He worked for more than 30 years in residential construction alongside his brother, a structural engineer. That background is not incidental to the instruments — it is embedded in them.

His knowledge of materials, structure, joinery, and custom construction shaped how he thinks about wood: not as a passive medium but as a material with its own logic, grain, and voice. The instruments are built the way a careful builder builds a house — with attention to how things hold together and what they want to do.

Carl began by following natural tree forms and wood grain, creating musical sculptures that explored how long and short elements, free and fixed ends, and their interactions changed vibration and sound. Early instruments were large, cumbersome, and difficult to tune — but they produced sounds he had never heard before.

Decades of iteration led to instruments that are lighter, tunable, portable, and consistent. The current family of instruments — including The Fence, also called the Carlophone — can be played standing, worn like a guitar, or set on a stand. The performance is as visual as it is musical.