The Stuart-Moore musical glasses are arranged like two piano keyboards facing one another. Each goblet is a note, and each set of goblets comprises the three octaves above middle C, essentially the upper half of the piano. We mark certain notes by food coloring in the water so that we can quickly find our way around these eight-foot long instruments: all C's are red, E's are blue, and G's are green. Pedestals raise each glass to a uniform height so that our hands may move quickly from one rim to the next.
We have selected each glass by painstaking searches through stores and personal collections. A glass must not only have the correct pitch, it must respond quickly to the touch. Scandinavian glass is excellent, but heavier cut glass like Waterford cannot be used despite its lovely sound (when struck) because it is too thick to respond quickly to a finger stroking the rim. We are continually searching for very large and very small glasses to extend and improve our instruments.
We adjust the pitch of each glass precisely with water and the aid of an electronic tuner. Because the sound is made by the friction of the fingertip on the glass rim, it is essential to keep rims and hands scrupulously clean of oils. We use distilled water, wash and rinse our hands thoroughly before touching a glass, and ask others please not to yield to the temptation to touch the glasses.