Dr Didg
| Graham Wiggins | |
|---|---|
| Born |
October 25, 1962 New York, US |
| Died | September 7, 2016 (aged 53) |
| Nationality | US |
| Other names | Dr. Didg |
| Occupation | Musician |
Graham Wiggins (October 25, 1962 – September 7, 2016) was an American musician. He played the didgeridoo, keyboards, melodica, sampler, and various percussion instruments with his group, the Boston, Massachusetts-based Dr. Didg.
Graham Wiggins was born on 25 October 1962 in New York City. Wiggins held a D.Phil in solid-state physics from Oxford University, where he earned his nickname Dr. Didg while testing his didgeridoo in the Clarendon physics laboratory. He helped develop new technology for Siemens MRI scanners, including a 32 channel head coil.
Wiggins was born in New York to an Australian mother and a British father from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, and grew up in New York. He graduated from Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, NY in 1980. Although his first instruments were piano and horn, he first taught himself to play the didgeridoo while a physics student at Boston University in 1982, after hearing Warren Senders demonstrating a cardboard-tube didgeridoo as part of a "world music" concert series in Boston. He graduated from Boston University in 1985, relocating to Oxford, England for postgraduate study. In order to earn extra money there to complete his doctorate he also performed as a busking didgeridoo player.
In 1983 Wiggins invented a keyed version of the didgeridoo, which allows it to be played melodically somewhat in the manner of an ophicleide, a keyed brass instrument which Wiggins was able to try at the Bate Collection, a musical instrument museum at Oxford University's Faculty of Music in St Aldate's, Oxford. The first prototype was made out of a cardboard wrapping paper tube and had first only one, then four valves, allowing the instrument to play a total of five distinct pitches. He used it in only one concert, after which it fell apart. He then made the keyed didgeridoo he currently uses in 1990, using the machine tools at the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University. It is made from wengé (an African hardwood) with brass hardware. It has eight keys, which allows for the playing of nine different pitches. He unveiled it publicly for the first time on the British national television program called Tomorrow's World. The instrument may be heard on several Dr. Didg tracks, most notably "Sub Aqua," on the 2002 CD Dust Devils, as well as "Sun Tan," on the 1994 CD Out of the Woods.
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