Hal Rammel designed and built his first electroacoustic sound palette in l991. Inspired by such diverse sources as the live electronics of cellist Russell Thorne and the amplified table top arrays of Hugh Davies, he sought to explore similar sound fields in a different hand-held instrumental form.

Wooden rods sit perpendicular around the outer edge of an artist's palette all amplified by a single contact microphone attached to the back of the instrument. The rods can be bowed, plucked, struck, or caressed to produce a surprising variety of sounds that may be at once organic or mechanical, delicate or ferocious.