Northwest Creative Instrument Builders:
A Survey (Part 2)

Since the first set of stone chimes was invented, tools for producing sound have proliferated in human culture. Yet whenever a novel musical instrument arrives in our midst, it is usually relegated to the category of the "weird" and sometimes even the "dangerous," as was the case with the advent of synthesizers. It seems that until a newly invented musical instrument proves its commercial value, it is considered an aberration by academics and the mainstream music media; hence, few listeners are exposed to the cutting edge of instrument design.

We in the Northwest are fortunate to have among us a relatively large number of notable instrument inventors, musicians and composers who have consciously eschewed the factory-built and the conventional in favor of building their own musical instruments to capture the sounds they hear in their mind's ear. Local instrument builders range from the internationally acclaimed MacArthur "Genius Grant" awardee Trimpin to closet visionaries who build and perform on their unique creations in relative obscurity. Regardless of their visibility, these inventive musical minds and their creations are of particular interest to the Tentacle, with our mission to "sound the depths of Northwest Creative Music."

For this survey and exploration of the Northwest's creators of unique musical instruments, the Tentacle contacted more than 25 individuals who not only design their own instruments but also use them specifically to create adventurous, non-mainstream music. The responses to our questions about the respondents' instruments and inspirations reveal an impressive variety of approaches to instrument construction and the philosophy of sound. Doubtless there are others pursuing similar work of whom we are unaware; no omission is intentional.

We hope you will find this overview of Northwest instrument inventors as fascinating as we have. If readers have questions or comments about any of the artists and their instruments, please do not hesitate to contact the Tentacle and we'll pass on your queries. Bon voyage!

Eveline Müller-Graf
Eveline Müller-Graf currently plays the trap drums in a trio with Jim Knodle and Cedric Ross, "The Boeing" in the group Street of Crocodiles with Greg Sinibaldi and Reuben Radding, in the Sil2k Ensemble, and in 3and2, a group with Eric Muhs, John Hawkley, and two ever-changing mystery guests. From time to time she also collaborates with other musicians such as innovative instrument builders Troy Swanson, Dave Knott, and Steve Barsotti and duos with guitarist John Schuller.

Instrument
The name of my instrument is "sharp metal objects," because it contains a whole bunch of pieces with sharp edges. Sometimes I nickname it "The Boeing" because a lot of the parts come from airplanes, like a set of gigantic washers that ring beautifully. My setup is basically like a table, mounted on a frame on wheels. The left side is a "xylophone" made out of conduit tubes that I found on a construction site, and I've cut them so they range from deep to high, but in no scale. The right side has different saw blades, some of them with washers on top for a sizzling sound. Then there are a few Goodwill brass objects and a little salad bowl and such things, some mounted upside-down.

On the side, hanging in a separate frame, are the famous airplane washers, almost in a perfect scale, and some pieces that sound great but whose origin is a mystery to me. On the floor, I've got some stuff that I change from time to time, except for three old school bells and a huge stainless steel bowl. The former are set up under the hanging frame with the other loud, ringing objects, and the latter is set up to the side, so I can let three small chains hang into it. These, too, maintain a very long sizzling sound, especially if I just tap the bowl with my fingers.

Sounds
For the sound of The Boeing, I would first like to point out that I play purely acoustically, if possible not even miked. I find that this gives a unique quality to the instrument. A lot of "homemade" instruments involve electronics, which leads to a certain sound. Which doesn't mean they all sound the same! But my work with purely acoustic instruments creates a specific world, as electronic instruments do.

Now for how I play The Boeing. You can grab sticks and bang on some of the pots and cans and it already sounds pretty good. But you can get so many more sounds out of it by playing with knitting needles, saws, homemade mallets, Slinkys, dishwasher brushes, baby rattles, and knives. Another way to play certain parts of the instrument is to bow them with a long, flat piece of metal, like a ruler; this produces an incredible variety of overtones. I have been experimenting for years, and still find new sounds.

Musically, I approach The Boeing as a melodic rhythm instrument (or a rhythmic melody instrument) or I set colors or "feels" with certain sounds. There are no written notes for the instrument. I play in experimental and improvising groups and projects, which I see as very imaginative and visual.

Inspirations
I started creating instruments a long time ago, when I played with Eric Muhs, John Hawkley, and Adam Griffen in a group called Pseudo Beat. Back then, I mainly had a collection of junk, not really anything like an instrument. But it was big fun, and seeing Eric playing his "Shitar" (a toilet seat with strings and a double neck), John playing his crutch with springs, or Adam playing some train-track pieces with contact mics gave me more ideas.

A lot of people were very inspiring to me: the Metaphonics, Man in a Can, Metal Men, Susie Kozawa (who joined Pseudo Beat for a while), all of them great inventors. But I was most inspired by Eric Muhs. He makes anything possible. I saw him burn pickles in a hot dog machine and mike them, shred LPs through a ventilator, make soda bottles explode, burn brooms in an alley, even stuff Robert Hinrix in an oil can on wheels and bang on it while rolling it around. No one ever knew what was going to happen — and that includes Eric himself. That was very liberating for me!

There are others, like Trimpin, Troy Swanson, Dave Knott, Steve Barsotti, and more. I think they're all very important. It's good to hear new sounds, it's interesting how these people approach their creations, and it's a great visual pleasure! And knowing of all these people traveling around with their awkward pieces makes me feel much better about entering a club with my Boeing.

Advice for instrument inventors
Start simple and experiment, play around and try every possibility. When you start, nothing is wrong — that happens later, when you get picky about applying your sounds. Also, be open to the idea of rebuilding things, because that too will happen later on.

Jon Tulchin
Jon Tulchin is a local sound artist who works with contact mics, found objects, field recordings, and invented instruments. Jon is interested in the projection of sound through alternative mediums (wood, metals, water, etc.). His experiments with amplification allow us to hear the subtleties of vibration.

Instruments
I call my creations "sound objects." Materials used include wood, spring coils, barbecue grills, steel wire, nails, door stops, guitar strings, rubber bands, and anything else that I can find on the street or in a thrift store. Each sound object varies in weight and appearance. All of the sound objects are centered around a piece of wood. Once I find a piece of wood I like, I begin to fasten resonant objects to it. The wood acts as an amplifier for the resonant objects. Most of the sound objects must be amplified by contact microphones to be perceived by the human ear.

The sound objects are used for live improvisations and as source material for multi-track compositions. Currently, I am the only player of my sound objects.

Sounds
The "sound objects" are designed to create massive low-frequency drones and midrange howls. They are also capable of creating a wide variety of percussive sounds and high-pitched shrieks.

Inspirations
I began to build my own instruments because of the sonic limitations of conventional instruments. Conventional instruments couldn't create the sounds that I was interested in. (Well, most conventional instruments, I still use an electric guitar in my work.)

Richard Lerman's work with contact mics has been a huge inspiration to me.

Advice for intrument inventors
Get off your ass and experiment. That's the only way to do it.

Steve Barsotti
Steven A. Barsotti is a sound artist living and working in Seattle whose current works include studio-based explorations of environmental recordings, and improvisation on invented instruments. He has performed and had his work played on radio in various cities in Europe, Canada, and the United States.

Instrument
My instrument is called the Springframe. It is about 4 feet high (including barstool stand), 3 1/2 feet wide, and about 1 1/2 feet deep. It is a wooden frame made from very rare Chicago back-alley pine. The frame supports a variety of springs, strings, and assorted objects, such as a rubber tube, wooden dowel rods, and brass rods. The strings are from a pipa (Chinese lute), and the springs are from people's back screen doors when they are not looking. The instrument is played with chopsticks, superball mallets, a toothbrush, bows, fingers, and the mechanics of a music box. The instrument is in constant evolution as I find new things to attach to the frame. The whole instrument is miked through a series of contact microphones placed around the frame and on the springs.

Sounds
A variety of sounds come out of this instrument. The springs, when bowed, give off very low, harmonically rich drones. They can also produce a very deep gong sound when struck. The brass rods can be plucked or struck and give off a vaguely pitched "plunk." When bowed near the top edge, I get very gritty breathy sounds. The pipa strings have a screechy, almost vocal quality when bowed as I change the tension of the strings with my fingers. Bowing or brushing the mics produces very gritty, tip-of-the-speaker-cone-dryness sounds.

The Springframe was designed with live collaborative improvisation in mind, but I have done a (very) little composition with it. The instrument was designed for me, although other people have played it.

Decent amplification is the most difficult issue with the Springboard. I use a variety of contact microphones in an assortment of places on the instrument, and still have not found the perfect sound yet. It also depends on playback. I do not have a p.a. system, and have to rely on house sound or borrowed amps. I have never achieved good sound through an amp. Bass amps don't give enough high end; guitar amps are too biased.

Inspirations
I was introduced to the idea of building instruments from various places. The first is an instrument inventor and historian named Hal Rammel, who lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I met him while I was studying sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1989. He came to a class and gave a presentation on "other" instruments from around the world. This included a variety of percussion string instruments made from natural materials and some made of the earth itself. I liked the idea of creating instruments from the environment. Being in the city, I started making instruments from found junk wood and metal. Rammel had also introduced me to the use of contact microphones to amplify instruments. The first instrument of his that I saw was an instrument called the Sound Palette, a painter's palette with dowel rods stuck around the edge. He had a contact mic stuck to the bottom and would bow or pluck the rods.

My approach to the use of the contact microphones also came from an experience I had with a guy in Chicago who gave me a cake-cooling rack with a string tied in a loop to it so that it could be hung on the back of your head. After putting in earplugs, you would make sure that the strings hung across the plugs. When you struck the rack, the vibrations were sent through the strings into the earplugs and then into your ears. I was fascinated by the microscopic detail of the sounds. Very subtle strokes and hits were clearly audible through this setup. I combined this idea with Hal Rammel's use of contact microphones to try to get at subtle details of sound from the various materials on my instrument. The only other instrument I've built, the grill harp, was directly related to the cooling rack idea.

Another person I greatly respect is Eric Leonardson, a fellow instrument inventor from Chicago. Eric and I collaborated for almost six years, and during that time I was able to develop my instrument as well as my playing style. My inspiration for this work also comes from my background in art, as opposed to music. There was a lot of performance and conceptual work that inspired me. The Dadaists and the Fluxus artists are two groups that come to mind. Einstürzende Neubauten has also provided inspiration. I feel I should acknowledge Harry Partch, although I was never too interested in his work.

I think that anyone who is constantly exploring the use of sound and music beyond what has been is worthwhile to creative music. Invented instruments open up possibilities of sonic creativity that can't be found in traditional instruments. They also open up "musical" ability to "non-musicians." I think that the people I mentioned above are doing important work. I also think that various people I met here in Seattle are doing interesting things.

Advice for instrument inventors
Exploration. Find materials and put them together. Listen to what stuff sounds like.

Paul Rubenstein
Paul Rubenstein has performed with Neem, Bakshish, Spacepeople, and the improv theater group Playback Theater Northwest, and is a member of electronic music collective the Sonicabal. He is currently working on a solo CD and focusing more on recording.

Instruments
I started building musical instruments in 1992, shortly before moving to Seattle. All of my instruments have gone through different incarnations, evolving and developing over time. My four main instruments are the ubertar, the m'birangi, the mechanical monk, and the electric saron.

The ubertar is a fretless electric stringed instrument played with a bow or plucked. It has eight melodic strings for a six-octave range (from bass to violin), and two automatic drone strings run by a small motor. The drones are inside the instrument. Each string has its own electromagnetic pickup, which I coil myself, and each pair of strings has a piezoelectric pickup with its own volume control. The drones, like the other strings, can be tuned, and the motor has a speed control.

The m'birangi is similar in principle to an m'bira (sanza, kalimba, thumb piano). It has 32 metal tines or keys that are plucked with the fingers (unlike an m'bira, where you use your thumbs). It is electric, with a 2-foot-long electromagnetic pickup. It also has eight strings set close together, which can be plucked or used as an automatic drone. The drone operates by turning on a motor that spins a propeller. On each end of the propeller are magnets. As a magnet passes underneath a string, it pulls the string toward it, and as the magnet goes by, the string is released. This way, the strings are set in motion without ever being touched. This creates a very ethereal, haunting sound.

One of the main problems with performing live is transporting so many instruments, so I started building automatic drones into the instruments to be more efficient. The more you can do with one instrument, the fewer you need to bring to the gig. — Paul Rubenstein

The mechanical monk is another motor-driven automatic stringed instrument. The motor rubs a ridged knob against two bass strings, which are played with two steel rods as slides. The steel rods separate the strings into three sections. No matter where you move the rods, the resulting intervals always have an inherent mathematical relationship to each other and to the previous intervals, because the three parts always add up to one string length. The mechanical monk has two pickups with separate outputs, to play in stereo. The resulting sound is something like a cross between Tibetan monks and alien spaceships (as opposed to the government spaceships).

The electric saron also has a 2-foot-long pickup. It is essentially an electric xylophone, with steel rods suspended over the pickup that are played with mallets. The rods are easily removed and replaced, to change the scale.

Inspirations
When I build an instrument, it's to get a new sound, or to gain the ability to do something I couldn't before. The first instrument I built was the "microtonal guitar," an electric guitar with movable frets. I was a guitar player, and wanted to experiment with the music and scales of other cultures, as well as come up with some ideas of my own. A guitar with the usual frets limits you to 12 notes per octave, which can be stifling. All of the instruments I've built have been with this in mind. It's important to have access to the notes.

I got interested in automatic drones when I was playing in Bakshish, a duo consisting of me on the instruments I build and various "world" instruments like oud and rebab, and Viren Kamdar on various "world" percussion (tablas, doumbek, etc.). With only two people, it was a challenge to fill out the sound. The first incarnation of the mechanical monk was called the foot bass. It was played by strumming the strings with my foot, while I used my hands to play other instruments. This was a pain in the ass, so I added the motor and renamed it the autodrone. With the addition of stereo outputs, and the technique of playing it with slides, it found its true identity as the mechanical monk.

One of the main problems with performing live is transporting so many instruments, so I started building automatic drones into the instruments to be more efficient. The more you can do with one instrument, the fewer you need to bring to the gig. Another major problem with performing is maintaining the instruments. Transporting them back and forth from gigs can cause a lot of wear and tear, and you can spend a lot of time doing repair work.

Advice for instrument inventors

My advice to anyone thinking about making an instrument is to go ahead and do it. If something doesn't work, there's a reason why, which you can figure out and fix the problem. If you can't fix it, find another way to do what you want to do. Once you run into problems, you'll know what you need to research and study. You can look at other instruments to get ideas for different ways to solve a particular problem. Look at instruments from all over the world — you'll find a lot of different ways people have approached the same or similar things. Choose ideas that fit your instrument. Use what inspires you.

Alex Keller
Alex Keller is a sound artist and educator living in Seattle. He will be releasing a CD of some of his works soon, and currently performs on his instruments with Christopher DeLaurenti as rebreather.

Instruments
I've never named any of my instruments, for whatever reason. These are the ones in my current stable:

One, A, is made from a Rocktek flanger pedal, rewired to create a feedback loop with a dial and a few switches. The input jack is not used. It is built into a smoke alarm's case.

Another, B, is made from a children's book with built-in sound effects; when certain characters or events occur in the book, the reader is supposed to press a button to trigger a related sound effect. I've replaced the part that decides what speed/pitch to play the sounds back with a knob, so that the speed/pitch can be changed in real time. It is housed in the gutted case of a modem. I have a few more modified children's books that I am in the process of finishing.

Another, C, is made from an FM radio that was rewired so that it doesn't pick up broadcasts, just its own feedback and noise. It is installed in an external computer hard drive case.

Another, D, in progress is made from a voice-effecting megaphone and a music box element. The music box element is attached to the microphone on the megaphone, which transforms the pitch and amplifies it. I'm not sure what to mount this one in just yet.

Older instruments were made from things like Speak-n-Spells, a Macintosh LC I computer, and a Casio mini-keyboard.

I am the sole performer, but the instruments are not really difficult to operate. They are used for both improvised and composed work. However, by nature they are unstable; a lot of the rewiring I do is by experiment rather than deliberation, and sometimes things stop working and I don't know why. A big part of performing with them is wrestling with them to get them to do something interesting, which makes working with compositions more of a challenge. One piece, One hundred years of solitude, uses two instruments and a cassette. The score designates the length, the beginning, and the end, but leaves the transition up to the performer, and the whims of the instrument. The fact that, when working properly, they are still unstable is not a limitation.

One limitation can be an instrument's limited range of sounds. In early rebreather performances I used a lot of Speak-n-Spells; eventually the sound became too overused and I had to pull the Speak-n-Spells from active duty.

They turned it on and the right-angle bit made the drill spastically jump around the room, creating a fantastic racket and very dangerous situation. All of a sudden, the audience was put into the position of considering the sound-generating device as something that they knew and had used, and that was behaving in an unsafe manner. — Alex Keller

Sounds
I try to get the instruments to sound similar to the way the manufacturer meant them to, not always successfully. They are generally grittier, and some tend to jump out of control or into silence.

A sounds like squeals, groans, and robot voices.

B goes from chipmunk rap to gritty spaceship sideswipes.

C makes blurts, hisses, and grinds.

D is stacatto, sweet, with just a whiff of nostalgia.

Inspirations
My musical training started with the acoustic guitar at age 9. I started working with toy and consumer electronics in a high school band, when I would wire toy musical instruments to an explosively loud p.a. system. I started building rewired instruments about five years ago, when I was constructing synthesizer modules and began interfacing them with toy ray-guns and portable radios.

The real inspiration is the idea that within these ubiquitous, trashy electronic devices lies the capacity to make engaging sound work; you don't need a PowerBook or a full recording studio.

The other inspiration for the instruments is their existence as aesthetic objects, which I am currently experimenting with. When you see a modified keyboard, the piano keys imply a specific way that the performer interacts with the instrument. If the same device were built into a microwave oven, and you played the keys by hitting the timer buttons, you would lose the relationship with the object as "piano." Instead, you have the chance to approach the instrument with a different technique, and maybe not even consider it a "musical instrument" but some obtuse new kind of consumer electronic device.

A lot of artists are doing similar work with circuit bending, both locally and globally; my own creations are technically crude in comparison to most. The instruments are conceptually influenced by Marcel Duchamp, Nam Jun Paik, and David Tudor, among many other artists who work with manufactured and modified objects.

One of my favorite [invented instruments] is by the band Seemen. I saw them in Houston 10 years ago or so, where they performed with an electric drill with a bit that went off at a right-angle to the driver. They plugged the drill into an electrical line that was turned off, taped down the on switch, then turned it on and the right-angle bit made the drill spastically jump around the room, creating a fantastic racket and very dangerous situation. All of a sudden, the audience was put into the position of considering the sound-generating device as something that they knew and had used, and that was behaving in an unsafe manner.

Hal Rammel makes wonderful instruments, primarily acoustic or electroacoustic, that incorporate familiar objects in unfamiliar ways. One I loved was an ornate wooden table leg with strings and tuning pegs running down its length. In the domain of modified electronics, Reed Ghazala is the real groundbreaking figure. Why is he (or the idea) important? Awareness of the potential to modify electronics makes us understand that we don't have to accept off-the-shelf creative solutions, and the accompanying high prices. Being able to make sound art with a $10 investment at the thrift store and $30 at Radio Shack is liberating and exciting, and really levels the playing field.

Advice for intrument inventors
Check out www.oddmusic.com/illogic/illogic1.html for a detailed guide to circuit bending by Ghazala himself. I usually start with a battery-powered sound-generating device like a boombox or toy that I know is working, crack it open, and use test leads with alligator clips (get them at Radio Shack) to try and short-circuit it in an interesting way. Avoid the connections closest to the batteries, as the higher voltages there can fry more sensitive components. Sometimes the device will completely stop working; turn it off, count to five, and turn it back on again. Try shorting the circuits with a potentiometer (Radio Shack again, try a linear 100K value) attached to your test leads. Once you start to get results, it's not too difficult to solder on a few switches or potentiometers to make the short circuits permanently accessible.

Andrew & Adrian Woods
Andrew Woods is a professional computer and stop-motion animator who is working toward being able to maximize the amount of time he spends playing collectively improvised music. Adrian Woods is a "second and third artist and musician." Both perform in the groups HeeND and Neon Brown.

Instruments
Andrew: My 9-string touch-guitar, the "splitner," is a 24-fret neck-through body design in rosewood and wenge, both very dark woods. It is similar to the Chapman Stick in its upright playing position and simple ergonomic design; it's basically a big wide guitar neck floating in front of my chest. It is a little under 4 feet long and weighs roughly 10 pounds. Most of the weight is supported where it hooks into this huge weightlifting belt that I wear around my waist, and there's also a little shoulder strap to hold it close to vertical. Some rather unusual features are the "glow-in-the-dark FIMO" fret markers (cooked into the neck with a hair dryer), and the use of a door hinge as the tail-stop.

The strings are laid out in fourths all the way from low B-flat (a half step below low B from a standard five-string bass) to D (a whole step below the high E on a standard six-string guitar), and the output is split through two separate pickups and corresponding amplifiers. The lower four strings go more or less exclusively through a five-string bass pickup, while the top five go through a standard Seymour Duncan jazz guitar pickup. There is a little crossover on the middle string that helps to smooth the transition between amplifiers for melodic lines that cross over the boundary. All of the electronics are passive, so there's no need for batteries.

With two separate signal-processing paths and two clunky modified amplifiers, I'm dragging around a bunch of gear! It's funny, it actually feels so much limiting than anything I've played before. It's like piano with slide and vibrato capabilities. I can even play in the same range with both hands on entirely different parts of the neck in a way that would make for a heck of a finger-tangle on a keyboard.

The odd thing about the splitner in the two-piece format is that I'm theoretically responsible for covering the whole tonal range. In both composition and improvisation, the two-handed technique tends to push me toward the heavy use of counterpoint. Simply by virtue of not banging away with both hands in unison, I find that I'm automatically fitting the highs in between the lows (and vice versa) so that sounds naturally stay out of each other's way. When I'm warmed up, it feels more like I'm playing hand drums, even though we might be moving through a bunch of weird chord-changes.

Adrian: The Torgo 3000 is essentially a six-piece handmade drum set with lots of bizarre little additions. The drums are standard double-headed design, made with wenge and birch wood; the snare is birch and bocote wood. They were created using an unusual barrel-type construction. All of the components are completely built from scratch, including all of the hardware and the snare throw-off. This is all mounted on a wenge-and-padouk rack system that is about 48"x40"x21". There is a double hi-hat pedal — one pedal is attached to a remote bike cable that controls one of the few store-bought parts (14" Paiste Hi-hats), and the other pedal triggers a shaker made from tambourine jangles. In addition, there is a 16" galvanized steel ride with rivets, two hammered-chrome serving dishes, a 1-liter coke bottle filled with rice, a cake pan, two handmade wood blocks, a variety of candle holder pieces, and one store-bought 16" crash cymbal.

On one side of this percussion monster is a section dedicated to melodic instruments and electroacoustic sound effects. I have a two-octave electric thumb piano that I call RakeWon (made from bloodwood, birch plywood, and rake tines), and an instrument that I built using three bass strings, two metal springs, and wenge and birch plywood. Using piezoelectric pickups, I run these through effects and create otherworldly sounds and rhythmic loops.

The kit is totally nonadjustable and suited strictly to my body. Other people have played it, but they tend to have a hard time making the transition from a standard kit to the Torgo 3000.

Sounds
Andrew: With my most common playing approach, where each hand strikes its own notes just by fretting them, the high end sounds a bit like a clavinet, with no pick or finger-scrape on the attacks. The low end sounds pretty much like a standard bass, but maybe just a bit more electronic, with the similarly clean attack and warm compressed bottom. When I play it in a more conventional way, with my left hand fretting and right hand finger-picking, it sounds like either a standard electric bass or a six-string with a humbucker, depending on what range I'm in. The pickups are pretty traditional.

Adrian: Torgo 3000 sounds more or less like a conventional drum kit with a unique short-sustain percussive feel. It's incredibly versatile: I can sit on the kick, snare, hi-hats, and toms and create a pretty standard-sounding groove (though the toms do have some unique timbral qualities because they are so shallow compared to their diameters), or play all of the hand-built metal percussion and wood-block-type stuff and create a real found-sound world kind of groove. When I get into the electric thumb piano and the effects box, on which I will sometimes bow the bass strings and loop them to create drones, it can get pretty wild. I can create the feel of an entire African thumb-piano band by looping several passes of rhythmic phrases on RakeWon. And the springs on the box can sound pretty catastrophic when run through effects. Because of the versatility of sounds that the Torgo 3000 creates, it can pretty much play in any format.

Inspirations
Andrew: I decided to repaint the body of my Sears electric guitar when I was about 17. I took off all of the non-wood parts, and a friend and I just went at it with all kinds of paints, markers, and magazine clippings. It turned out to be a bit harder putting the thing back together properly, but with the help of my dad, it was eventually playable again. I spent the next several years periodically refinishing (and occasionally re-sculpting) my small collection of mediocre guitars. In college, I discovered improvised music in a big way and also built my first "neck," for a half-scale 12-string acoustic.

Shortly after, I started playing "jam-oriented" music in the band hEENd with my brother on drums and a longtime friend on bass. During this period I built a pair of nylon-string bass-type instruments, one (sort of a tenor) that I played occasionally with the group, and one (a deep stand-up version) for the bassist, who still plays it. Both used various gauges of "weed-whacker" cord for strings and had a really unusual tone — almost synthlike with its crisp high end.

Adrian: Andrew built the first iteration of the Torgo. I had never played drums before, and hEENd was having a nightmare time finding a drummer, so he told me if I ever moved back to Seattle, I would play drums for them. I started on a kit that was all cardboard boxes and Pringles tubes. Then, for my 21st birthday, Andrew built me this crazy kit. It was all two-by-fours and 3/4" plywood with single-headed toms, but it really did the trick. So I guess he really got me into it. I built a snare drum just to see if I could do it. It sounded good and I was surprised. That was sort of the beginning of the end for me.

Andrew: [Another inspiration for me was] the Chapman Stick (a 10- or 12-string "touchboard" instrument created by Emmett Chapman). Originally, I just wanted a Stick with wider string spacing and a few other minor modifications. As the design started to take shape, I found there were more and more things that I wanted to do differently, plus some things I just couldn't do as nicely, which presented some fun problems to solve. My aluminum bridge is a much less elegant design than that of the Stick, but for me it was still a big feat of engineering, and I was relieved to find that it works just fine.

Adrian: The African thumb piano and some of the bizarre instruments that the guys from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Charming Hostess, and Idiot Flesh have built. I love Harry Partch's stuff.

Advice for intrument inventors
Andrew: Listen to the sounds that things make — even things around the house: the bathtub filling with water, your keys jingling in your pocket. What kinds of materials produce tones that resonate with you?

Adrian: Don't have any preconceptions about what's "good," or the way things are "supposed" to sound.

Randall Jones
Randall Jones comes from a cold land called Wisconsin where he watched lots of MTV. He has been living in Seattle for the last eight years, during which time he has focused on his own composition, as well as engineering problems related to what he sees as a crucial question for our time: How can machines enhance the uniquely human ability to dream?

Instrument
My performance system, called "nine," is mostly implemented in software. The one indispensable hardware component is a pressure-sensitive pad made by a Canadian company called Tactex. This pad has an active sensing area of seven by five inches. I also use my iBook portable computer when I play. The whole setup fits nicely into my backpack with room for a change of clothes.

I compose musical spaces made of multiple sound patches and instructions for how my playing will be quantized in both time and pitch. When I perform, I pick one or more spaces that fit the mood, and play within each one for as long as seems appropriate. The space provides a microenvironment for improvisation. It sets a certain mood, but the melodic and rhythmic information I communicate within the space is different for each performance.

Technically, I have to plug it into a transducer in order to make sound. My preference is for a large club p.a. system. Mains power is required for the system. A video projector is also necessary if the audience is to view the visual component of my show. These limitations restrict my playing to certain types of situations, which do not include certain desirable ones like picnics. I am continually updating my software little by little to improve the performance control and sound quality. I am currently on the second major revision of the system, version 0.6.

I put the system together primarily to make my own music. Any wider application will depend on other individuals' active desire to make music in a similar fashion.

Sounds
Like Miller Time at the robot-controlled robot factory. Jubilant layers of little clicking noises, wobbly oscillators, bleeps blorps and bloops.

Inspirations
The potential of the computer to augment human capabilities in sound creation has inspired me from the get-go. My first experiments in 1984, using a VIC-20 computer with a joystick as input device, contained the seeds of all my work to date.

The music of Wendy Carlos, Vangelis, Laurie Anderson, and various academic electronic music composers were my hermetic soundtrack in high school, providing clear visions of new worlds and a coded escape plan for getting out of the Midwest. Other important music then was Miles, the Liquid Sky soundtrack, Duran Duran, Gary Numan, Sabbath. Also, the May 1968 uprising in Paris and the Situationist International have been very helpful.

Robert Moog has been a longtime inspiration. His engineering is directed so economically toward manifesting aesthetic possibilities that his instruments are artworks in their own right. Salvatore Martirano, with his Torgo 3000 Sal-Mar construction, created new possibilities at the juncture of human improvisation and machine composition. All of the visionary instruments from EMS and Buchla are important as well.

The whole Max/MSP community is also an essential source of inspiration and help. Max/MSP is the visual DSP (digital sound production) environment I am using to create some of my software. People like Monolake and Kit Clayton, who both work with Max/MSP, are inspirational.

Advice for instrument inventors
First, if you're a musician and not a professional instrument designer, are existing instruments good enough? Think hard about this, because you could make lots and lots of music in all the time you'll spend making your instrument. Second, have clearly defined goals. Get good at playing another instrument like the one you wish to build. Intimately and rationally know the changes you want to make in that instrument from a musical perspective. Study the engineering disciplines needed to effect those changes. Then build your instrument!

Dave Knott
David Knott is a music therapist, instrument builder, and composing improviser. He has performed in solo and ensemble settings with instruments of his own design and construction, and remains a member of the experimental quartet Greasy. His debut solo CD Natura Naturans, featuring his stringboard instruments, has been released on Anomalous Records [NOT 1]. He is also a member of Animist Orchestra.

Instruments
I've made several different types of instruments — monolimbics, lamentars, shardogin, nordophone, mouthbows — but the most recent, and the ones that I keep returning to, are the stringboards. They are usually made from found materials, so the size is dependent on that. I have used lengths of cedar up to 10 feet, but normally use pieces of plywood: 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch thickness, length between 3 and 4 feet, and width between 1 and 3 feet. Almost always made from wood, though DJ Riz gave me a piece of corrugated Boeing surplus material that he used to make record shelves. That piece has a nice resonance, but it isn't wood. Used strings (guitar, cello, violin, etc.) are attached to the boards via dulcimer tuning pins. Objects (nut shells, snail shells, license plates, etc.) are often used as adjustable bridges.

The stringboard was "designed" as an instrument to explore the sonic possibilities of prepared strings on found wood. I've used them mostly in improvised settings, though I have written one composition for stringboards alone. I haven't designed stringboards for others as much as others design their own or reconfigure the ones I make. They are intentionally ready-made in appearance, which seems to inspire people to feel free to pluck at will or even alter the design, move bridges, play hard and break strings, etc.

The tuning system I am using is completely subjective and based solely on the type of string used and a qualitative decision of when the tightened string sounds to be "the most resonant." So, you make up the prepared string, put it around the tuning pins, and tune it up until it reaches its most resonant sound. This is usually just before it snaps.

A big limitation is that the tuning of each board is idiosyncratic. I am able to play melodies within about an octave range by pressing a string down onto the surface of the board and either plucking or bowing. In terms of playing with other people, one must rely entirely on the ears and intuition to make it work. Also, while I have enjoyed playing these instruments acoustically because I like tuning people's ears to smaller tolerances, I have had difficulty adequately amplifying stringboards in performance with loud instruments or in large halls. Mostly I use contact microphones, a clip-on and a stick-on.

I have used stringboards on my solo CD Natura naturans (Anomalous Records, www.anomalousrecords.com), with the ensemble Jerman/Knott/Kozawa/Rajkowski/Shannon and our CD Coincidentiae Mirabiles, on the compilations A Rendering of the Veil and lowercase-sound, on the Sonarchy radio show, and in numerous ad hoc groups. I've made (or assisted individuals in making) stringboards for composers, improvisers, at-risk youth, my mother, and others. Eric Lanzillotta played stringboards along with Reinhold Marxhausen's sound sculpture on a 7" record titled Abandoned. The Degenerate Art Ensemble played with a set of stringboards in preparation for performing "The Albatross," a string quartet I wrote for the group.

Christopher Shainin composed two pieces using stringboard with chamber orchestra, "By Night," performed by the Seattle Creative Orchestra in October 2000, and "I Got There, You Were Gone," performed at Meany Studio Theatre in December 2000.

Sounds
The stringboards have been described as sounding like gongs, cymbals, and bells — but that is just the strings. Friction-based groans and shrieks, drones, soft feathery swishes, and loose-stringed "sproings" are also sonic possibilities.

Inspirations
Peculiar resonance of a hollowed-out pumpkin… I went to the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix, Arizona, and while I was there, I was amazed and inspired by the sound of all the wood and the processes of making an instrument. I began to hear a "musical" quality in the raw materials — sanding, filing, the wood itself before it is even an "instrument." When I returned to Seattle, I began improvising with musicians and allowing this more inclusive aesthetic into my playing. Breaking down the pieces/parts of music became my main musical interest.

I began to hear a "musical" quality in the raw materials — sanding, filing, the wood itself before it is even an "instrument." — Dave Knott

I like much of the music of Hans Reichel and Ellen Fullman, and of course the prepared piano music of John Cage and inside-the-piano playing of Henry Cowell. I liked the vocal qualities that Hans gets from his Daxophone, and Ellen's suspended, multi dimensional sounds. Her use of long strings was an inspiration for me to tie strings together. Harry Partch's instruments are very interesting, as well as those of the Bachet brothers and Harry Bertoia. But my grandfather has always had the biggest influence on the way I naturally work, I definitely got my puttering creativity from him. He had a junkyard when I was growing up, and I would spend long hours beating on parts of old junk cars. He was also quite an innovator, often building whatever he needed around the junkyard or the farm. When he moved to southern Maryland about 60 years ago, he and a friend built a forklift. We have some 8mm footage of grandpa ramming junk cars with this odd-looking old forklift.

Advice for instrument inventors
Start by listening to your environment and your actions in your environment. Example: The other night I was stacking dishes, and when I sat one plate down on the other it rocked back and forth rather quickly. Besides the rocking sound, I noticed a low subharmonic tone descending in pitch as the rocking slowed. By taking notice of your environment, you can get a better understanding of what sounds captivate your attention and what may possibly inspire you to build your own instrument.

Creative Music's Tenuous Future on Northwest Airwaves

by Mike Marlin

The unseen world of the ether continually swirls around us, yet here in the Northwest, a state of homeostasis has come to occupy these amber waves of gain. In the past few years, significant new strides in radio technology have begun to change the FM and Internet radio landscapes. Yet with these purported innovations, the programming content and philosophy of station management has shifted little. One could argue that the eternal drive to "boldly go where no format has gone before" has caused a retrogressive slant in content risk-taking — that each new refinement in bandwidth, live streaming, or other expensive outlays brings about a common-denominator audience-fishing expedition in order to sustain new equipment, facilities, and management.

While an inquiry into the influence of powerful forces — the spirit-crushing NAB (National Association of Broadcasters), deregulation-happy FCC (under the hands-off leadership of Michael Powell), watered-down low-power FM allotments, the centrist slant of NPR and its effect on the commercialization of public radio, and the troubling censorship by the Pacifica Foundation of its own reporters and programming — is an important study in its own right, I prefer the simpler route: a quantitative evaluation of adventurous music's status on Northwest airwaves in 2001. Is there ample opportunity to hear and be educated about exploratory music that is otherwise marginalized to the music collections of mavericks or a few Internet discussion groups? And if there is a dearth in adventurous radio programming, how do proponents of challenging music reverse this trend?

As editor of the Tentacle's Radio Free Improv Web site and Ink column for the past four years, I can only make quasi-scientific and admittedly biased pronouncements in order to establish my own happy medium, yet hopefully some quasi-modal hunches will serve to reveal a future that is not hopelessly futile for the proliferation of adventurous Northwest music on the radio dial.

A quick glance at the smattering of adventurous radio programs compiled by the (see www.tentacle.org/radio.html) — by no means intended to be exhaustive — reveals an extremely low proportion of programming hours per geographical area per broadcast day. Of the contingent of community radio, university- and/or community college-licensed, and NPR-affililated stations from Vancouver, B.C. to Portland, the average airtime devoted to experimental music is about three hours per week. In larger urban areas, the number of hours climbs to approximately 15 hours per week, and a certain proportion of these are comprised of jazz and electronic music that may not be considered adventurous by today's standards.

In April, the University of Washington-licensed KCMU 90.3 FM an nounced its partnership with mogul Paul Allen's Experience Music Project and a change in its call letters to KEXP. The "EXP," proudly exclaimed a KEXP spokesperson interviewed on April 1, stands for "experimentation" in all facets of the station's operations. The silver-throated lackey was quick to assure listeners, however, that there would be absolutely "no change" to the station's format, disc jockeys, or programming schedule. While this type of "experimentation" may encompass technological breakthroughs, I find it hypocritical to tout a station as "experimental" when it features mainly the same ol' fare — primarily Indie rock with a few acceptably mainstream fringe genres and a paltry few hours of experimental music. If KEXP is indicative of the rush and gush to proclaim that the new mediums are the new message, then we should be able to find other examples of the effort to win us over with the public relations game.

Sure enough, as Marshall McLuhan so wisely predicted, the globalization of media hinges on people's ability to identify with a narrowly focused consumer tastes. The "global village" of radio has developed in the past 50 years with the consolidation of format-rotation radio, in which audiences are targeted for narrowly focused product repetition, and by the proliferation of syndicated, satellite-delivered programming and, to a lesser degree, live audio streaming via the Internet. The latest phenomenon to attempt to satisfy the supposed fervor for infinite consumption is XM Radio.

Although radio delivered via satellite is not a new concept, XM offers the alluring prospect (like cable TV) of hundreds of narrowly-cast audio channels tailored to every conceivable audience taste in existence. But upon closer examination of XM's program choices, we find large conglomerates and mainstream music industry giants lining up to grab their piece of the dish (see www.xmradio.com). For listeners, it sounds exciting to be able to pay a $10 monthly subscription fee and get 100 or more channels, and it is conceivable that some of the independently contracted channels might imbue their broadcasts with real passion, unlike the sterile digital canned music selections initially offered with many cable TV packages. I'll admit that I'd love nothing more than to be able to pick up the Avant-Garde Music Network from the XM satellite, but my hunch is that such a coup, were it economically possible, would be construed as being threatening on some moral or national security premise — or worse, it would be some corporate radio consultant's idea of what radical music sounds like. Perhaps I am subconsciously bitter as I was once part of a group (the Briarpatch Collective) who planned to start a Rhode Island-based experimental nationwide cable satellite radio station (WIRE — Radio Free Rumford) that ultimately dissolved because we were unable to raise the half million dollars in required startup costs.

I don't mean to imply that the above media outlets are the only offenders. Other radio stations, such as KBCS-FM (Bellevue Community College), KBOO-FM in Portland, and CBC in Vancouver are not immune to criticism even if they do make an effort to include important adventurous music programs. The solution, if one believes that these programming gaps are weaknesses that need fixing, is unclear. Turning to the Internet is only a partial remedy, as computers are still not as universal as radio. But audio proliferation via digital means may be our only hope as traditional radio broadcasters are subject to mergers and propaganda wars that will eventually, I believe, push experimental music off the dial in favor of sanitized, yuppified, feel-good NPREI-sanctioned musical idioms such as World Pop. If we are ever to challenge entrenched radio stations (commercial and noncommercial) to expand their horizons and extend the reach of creative music programming, it will have to come from a populist uprising and not by polite conviction. Given the practically nonexistent number of available FM frequencies (especially on the low end of the dial) and the restricted range and sound quality in transmitters of low-power FM frequencies (if you can manage to get one), the opportunity to launch a slate of new adventurous radio stations seems bleak. Here in the U.S., it is hard to imagine that the government would allow any type of takeover of an existing radio facility as is wont to happen in other parts of the world.

So in lieu of revolutionary action (which I'm not opposed to, for I in fact entertain fantasies of occupying a 50-kilowatt FM studio and forcing the sales department staff to yank off their ties and dance to some Stockhausen), how can listeners ensure significant representation of exploratory music on the air? In addition to continued lobbying (calling, e-mailing, and writing your local programming directors relentlessly to tell them that you want to hear New Music, not new recordings by the same artists), volunteering for air shifts and working yourself into the programming block as an indispensable resource, and supporting the few programmers who are willing to take musical risks with phone calls and ducats at fundraising time, listeners might consider projects such as a dedicated adventurous music network (funded with grants and venture capital) to be picked up by a competing satellite company. In the meantime, support pirate micro-radio stations such as Free Seattle Radio (xcube.microradio.net/studiox/). And when I start my own station some day, I promise to hire each and every one of you as time slots permit.

Flotsam

"There are a lot of parallels between being a criminal and being a jazz musician."

—Art Pepper

Overheard: "Listening to songs is like resorting to the missionary position."

Navigating the Littoral Zone

While music itself remains the best gateway to musical ideas and inspiration, books on music and musicians offer invaluable guidance for additional exploration. The opinions expressed are those of the respective authors and may or may not reflect the views of the Tentacle Collective.

Conversations with Iannis Xenakis
(Faber and Faber, 1996, 213 pages)
compiled by Balint Andras Varga

Iannis Xenakis: His sweeping glissandi and stochastically placed sonic eruptions can fill ears as evocatively as his architecture fills space. For him "Music is a kind of organism, it's slow to take shape, like the gestation of babies. This ensures that the music will be deep and alive and will conform to all your past experience... I can't think of another way." His great literary work is Formalized Music, an enormous tome in which he expounds at length on his systems for producing scores. Conversations is much more informal and intimate. In a series of interviews he discusses his life and his music, from his formative years in the Greek Civil War and his subsequent exile through working with the architect Le Corbusier and his years as a composer. He comments on his own pieces, music in general, and other musicians ("The only difference between [Morton Feldman and I] is that his average level is very soft and my average level is very high."). Score excerpts, a chronological list of compositions, and a discography are extra bonuses.

— Mike Nail

Songs in the Key of Z
(a cappella books, 2000, 272 pages)
by Irwin Chusid

Songs in the Key of Z is a terrifically entertaining collection of essays on "outsider" music that anyone who makes unusual art should find challenging — not because its case histories of oddball musicians are hard to read, but because its definition of outsider music forces artists to consider where they stand in relation to their work and in relation to their audience. Chusid puts loonies who have little idea of what they're doing (The Cherry Sisters, Florence Foster Jenkins) with serious composers (Harry Partch, Robert Graettinger), and rank unknowns with media darlings. His standards of inclusion are based mostly on exclusion from notice and/or respect. Some are excluded from the attention they deserve (or, more to the point, think they deserve) because they're just bad; others are excluded because their stuff defies conventions of form or taste.

Sensitive to criticism that he risks exploiting people we laugh at rather than with, Chusid persuasively argues that these folks are content to make their art and they want us to listen. However, he touches on (without adequately discussing) a problem of aesthetics that arises when we consider people who are insane. Some of his subjects have a fairly clear idea of their place in the world, but many are completely out of touch with reality. Time and again, these musicians are praised by recognized authorities because they manage to do things musically that only the most serious avant-gardist would dare to do, as if it were possible to do art by accident, unintentionally.

I don't knock Chusid for raising this question as he does. If Frank Zappa thought The Shaggs were brilliant or David Bowie loved the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, that's certainly important to these stories. What he has done is present these musicians more or less as they are (a CD is available to go with the book) and give good, accurate accounts of the reception strange music typically receives.

Whatever relationship the musicians Chusid portrays enjoy with reality, they all offer valuable (if unwitting) advice to others who make art that is, say, underappreciated.

Whether your stuff is good, bad, or ugly, Tentacle reader, you might ponder the fate of these artists, perhaps even retool your image to get your work across. Better yet, resist the temptation to retool your image, because, even "successful" outsiders risk identifying themselves as marginalized kooks whose music is strictly a novelty act, no matter how big the crowd they draw. And, if you're Captain Beefheart, you risk being dumped into a book with Tiny Tim and Wild Man Fischer.

— Doug Nufer

Dialogues with Boulez
(Scarecrow Press, 2001, 102 pages)
conducted by Rocco Di Pietro

In the late 1940s, composer Pierre Boulez was one of the original Twelve-Tone Apaches, applying serial principles not only to pitch but also to other elements of music, including rhythm and dynamics. An enfant terrible, Boulez savaged more than his share of sacred cows, famously leading a booing claque against Stravinsky, deriding his teacher Messiaen, and limning the limitations of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. His infamous Structures Book One (1951-2) for two pianos and Le marteau sans maître (1953-55) established his reputation as a composer with an astute ear for inhumanly complex rhythms and ravishing timbres.

During the Sixties and Seventies, Boulez found fame as conductor of the New York Philharmonic and BBC Symphony, where he programmed a passel of contemporary Classical Music, much to the distress of the greybeards in the audience. Boulez's busy schedule of conducting engagements coupled with his hornswoggling the French government into underwriting and appointing him head of IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) curtailed his composing, which had always flowed at a trickle anyway. An inveterate reviser, Boulez has revisited almost all of his works, subjecting them to withdrawal (Polyphonie X), orchestral transcription (the Notations for piano), and thorough revision (Mémoriale, Répons), as well as leaving many (Third Piano Sonata, ...explosante-fixe...) incomplete or open-ended. A trenchant essayist and commentator, Boulez's writings have been collected in several books, notably Notes of An Apprenticeship and Orientations.

Both an introduction and an update, Dialogues captures Boulez explaining his views on many composers including Scelsi, Feldman, Cage, and Varèse ("Look at Ameriques — there is no elaboration of material. All you have are simple juxtapositions..."). Di Pietro is an engaging interlocutor, and his well-considered questions elicit ample answers. The Dialogues range over many topics from background information on recent compositions Anthèmes 2 and the vertiginous Sur Incises, to a keen critique of Stockhausen's technique of formula composition, to a fascinating discussion of "tools" and "values" in composition. This slender but dense book will be a provocative addition to any musician's bookshelf.

— Christopher DeLaurenti

Talking Music
(DaCapo, 1995, 475 pages)
Conducted by William Duckworth

I picked this book up because of the wide range of people interviewed within, and besides, who can read too many John Cage interviews? The author says in the introduction that his original intent was to write a book about notation in the 1960s. What he ended up with instead are some very rewarding conversations with a number of important twentieth century musicians ranging from Cage to Conlon Nancarrow to LaMonte Young to Glenn Branca and John Zorn.

Duckworth, himself a composer, has a knack for asking insightful questions and for getting equally interesting answers. Of Ben Johnston (who studied with Cage, Partch, and Milhaud), he asks: "Within the experimental music tradition, what's the Faustian element?" to which Johnston replies "... any music which pretends to be in tune when it's not, which is adulterated, is a bad moral model..." All around, this is a great set of interviews with people who have a lot to say about creative music. The wide range of people interviewed makes for interesting juxtapositions of ideas and proves that every composer must find her or his own path in the world.

— Mike Nail

The Csound Book
(MIT Press, 2000, 726 pages and 2 CD-ROMs)
Edited by Richard Boulanger

"Computers're bringing about a situation that's like the invention of harmony. Sub-routines are like chords. No one would think of keeping a chord to himself. You'd give it to anyone who wanted it. You'd welcome alterations to it. Sub-routines are altered by a single punch. We're getting music made by man himself: not just one man."
— John Cage, "Art and Technology" (1969)
from John Cage: Writer (Cooper Square Press)

Writing this review has been tough, and I've had to start over several times. I finally realized that this isn't much different from working with Csound itself. Csound is a language for describing sound and writing music. The benefit of working with a language this rich (be it English or Csound) is that you can say almost anything you want. Sometimes, however, it's hard to know where to start.

To make music with Csound, you start with two text files: the orchestra and the score. Specifying the number of oscillators (or a sound sample) in the orchestra determines what your instrument(s) sounds like. The score dictates which instruments sound when. Although making sine waves can be very simple, getting complex frequencies and timbres careening in and out of your mix will take time. The advantage of using Csound is that your instrument can sound like anything you want (and can use any tuning). You can even use orchestras and scores that other people have written. These days Csound is playable in real time on fast computers, which makes experimentation easier.

The Csound Book itself is part tutorial and part reference. If you are new to Csound, the gentle introduction in the first chapter will get you started by helping you write progressively more complicated instruments. The rest of the chapters in the book each cover a specific subject in a tutorial format. All of the classic synth techniques such as additive, subtractive, ring modulation, and FM, and many uncommon ones like granular, physical modeling, and wave terrain are included. Much of the book is also dedicated to using Csound as a signal-processing effects unit.

Each chapter includes instrument and score examples, and all are included on the CD-ROMs, which also contain versions of Csound for different platforms (Linux, Unix, Mac, Windoze, etc.), lots of helper software to make using Csound easier, many extra chapters that they couldn't fit in the book, several collections of instruments, and a bunch of Csound music.

If you're intrigued by the idea of making music with Csound but want to try it out before buying the book, Csound itself is available free at www.csound.org. From there, you can get Csound and a tutorial to get started and can find links to many of the Csound resources on the Web. The Csound Book is a great book to have around if you decide to keep using Csound, and even for Csound veterans I'm sure there's a lot in this book that you haven't seen.

— Mike Nail

Minimalism: Origins
(Indiana University Press, 2000, 320 pages)
by Edward Strickland

This expansive book charts the origins of Minimalist artists such as Robert Morris and Donald Judd as well as musical Minimalism from LaMonte Young onward to Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Densely written, Minimalism can be tough going, but the bounty of information and depth of research set a standard for other musical movements in need of a historical summary: Japanese Noise and American Electro-Acoustic music. One drawback: I don't know if the hardcover published in 1993 had many illustrations, but the softcover has an overly minimal four, so you'll want to supplement your reading with a trip to the library, or by prowling through Half-Price Books.

— Christopher DeLaurenti

Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language
(Errant Bodies Press and Ground Fault Recordings, 2001, 280 pages with compact disc)
edited by Brandon LaBelle and Christof Migone

Music, Electronic Media and Culture
(Ashgate, 2000, 252 pages)
edited by Simon Emmerson

Topical anthologies tend to take one of three paths: encyclopedically encapsulating the subject, or summarizing the state of the art, or curating a complex combination of historical and current work. Writing Aloud ambitiously strives for the latter and veers from the brilliant to the inexplicably pedestrian. The book's essays, interviews, scores, and photographs sprawl gloriously from Bart Plantenga's arresting cross-cultural overview of yodeling to David Dunn's score for Madrigal to Nicholas Zurbrugg's knotty but ultimately rewarding ruminations on connections between sound poetry and the avant-garde. Apart from some dubious poetry and unremarkable photos, there are many other fine essays as well as intriguing interviews with Robert Ashley and Alvin Lucier.

I was thrilled by the CD's archival tracks (Arthur Petronio, Tellurgie from 1965, Vito Acconci's Body Building in the Great Northwest, and Marina Abramovic's Freeing the Voice, both from 1975) and can easily recommend most of the remaining pieces such as the extract of Chion's Gloria and Whitehead's Market Share. A few of the tracks, seeming to have nothing to do with language or writing, mystified me, though. If you're interested in the long-form intersection of text and music, Randy Hostetler's Once Upon a Time, Glenn Gould's Solitude Trilogy, and J.K. Randall's unnerving intimacy (a polemic) merit investigation. Quibbles aside, this bold anthology is a bargain.

By contrast Music, Electronic Media and Culture is more consistent, but takes fewer risks. I was mildly annoyed at the bibliography blithely listing CD release dates instead of those all-important dates of creation. While it's unlikely that most adventurous musicians will think Stockhausen's Kontakte and Wishart's Red Bird were composed in the early 1990s, others might be misled.

Nonetheless, despite the occasional ungainly terms such as problematise and paradigmatic, the essays are well written and teem with marvelous insights, such as "The modern tendency to regard tradition as a series of historical objects and as the antithesis of innovation... fails to acknowledge that traditions, to have continuing social currency, tend to change constantly. A contrasting Japanese attitude towards history and tradition is best exemplified by the case of a national shrine — a fourteenth century Buddhist temple — which is completely rebuilt from new materials every two years, and in which the tradition is regarded as not residing in the object itself but in the continuing knowledge of appropriate materials and building techniques." (Simon Waters, "Beyond the Acousmatic") And this jolt from editor Simon Emmerson: "We should not forget that the phrase avant-garde was first used by Henri de Saint-Simon in France (1825) at almost exactly the same time as Mendelssohn's inauguration of the museum culture in Western concert music with the revival of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion (1829) — the past and the future at once..."

Robert Worby's "Cacophony" offers eminently readable pillar-to-post explanations of Fourier analysis, harmonic partials, and guitar pickups as well as good summaries of the Futurists, early Minimalism, and Industrial music, though I wish he had devoted a few more sentences to Japanese Noise. Also included is Chris Cutler's indispensable "Plunderphonics," which outlines historical antecedents (Hindemith and Respighi, yikes!) and masterfully explores the swirl of contentious copyright issues. Unlike the recent Arcana essays edited by John Zorn, I suspect neither of these fine anthologies will get much press, but they are both well worth owning.

— Christopher DeLaurenti