Most people never ask it out loud, but they feel it. In the holistic environment, instruments are often chosen for symbolism, aesthetics, or stories rather than for clear acoustic behavior under real working conditions.

Over time, a quiet contradiction emerges. Almost every practitioner describes their didgeridoo as exceptional: powerful, unique, irreplaceable. Yet that same instrument was often bought by chance, from an unknown maker, built without explicit criteria, chosen because it “felt right” in that moment. Its extraordinary properties seem to exist only there, only in that one piece, only inside that story.

That’s where the real problem starts. If something works only because it happened to be that way, then it cannot be explained, replicated, or responsibly proposed to others. What remains is not a reliable instrument, but a fragile narrative — convincing when told, impossible to verify, impossible to reproduce.

In a professional context, this creates a silent tension. You’re asked to trust results that cannot be traced back to clear causes, and to stand behind tools you wouldn’t be able to defend calmly if questioned.

For me, that tension became impossible to ignore. So I changed the starting point. Instead of beginning with effects and building a story around them, I began with constraints: acoustics, playability, perception, limits. Not inspiration. Not intuition. And certainly not a single “lucky” build.

What followed was a long sequence of controlled experiments. This is where HoliStick comes from — not from chance, but from iteration. Prototype after prototype, small measurable changes were introduced: internal volumes, transitions, diameters, response curves, harmonic balance.

Some versions were acoustically impressive, but only in the hands of highly experienced players, able to remain almost motionless and compensate continuously. Others were stable and forgiving, yet incompatible with real holistic sessions, where movement, posture changes, and relational presence are unavoidable. Those versions were deliberately set aside, not because they were weak, but because they asked too much from the player.

That distinction changed everything.