Graham Wiggins

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Graham Wiggins playing his keyed didgeridoo

Graham Wiggins (b. New York, 1962) is an American musician. He plays the didgeridoo, keyboards, melodica, sampler, and various percussion instruments with his group, the Boston, Massachusetts-based Dr. Didg. He holds a D.Phil in solid-state physics from Oxford University, where he earned his nickname while testing his didgeridoo in the Clarendon physics laboratory.

Wiggins was born in New York to British parents from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, and grew up in New York. 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 it in movie soundtracks.[1] He graduated from Boston University in 1985, relocating to Oxford, England for graduate school.

While in graduate school at Oxford University, in order to earn extra money to complete his Ph.D. he also performed as a busking didgeridoo player. In 1988 he formed with guitarist Martin Cradick the core of Outback, a band that blended Australian tribal sounds with modern music. He obtained a record deal before completing his thesis. Following the dissolution of that group in 1991, he spent two months in early 1992 living in the Aboriginal community of Galiwinku on Elcho Island, off the coast of Arnhem Land, in Australia's Northern Territory, where he studied the advanced traditional didgeridoo techniques of the area. With the exception of a few songs such as "Brolga," Wiggins' compositions are generally not based primarily on traditional Aboriginal structures, but instead on the use of the instrument's percussive, rhythmic, and melodic capabilities.

In 1993 Wiggins formed the group Dr. Didg, with which he still performs. In 1994 he began using the technique of live sampling, which became the foundation of the Dr. Didg album Out of the Woods (1994).

After 15 years living in Oxford, Wiggins moved back to Boston in the spring of 2000.[2]

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,^{MP3 sample} as well as "Sun Tan," on the 1994 CD Out of the Woods.