Improvising with Machines: A taxonomy of musical interactions, by Adam Parkinson and Graham Dunning
An article written by myself and one of my PhD supervisors, Dr Adam Parkinson, was published today by the journal Organised Sound. The paper is open access and you can read it here: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771824000268
This article maps out some of the relationships between performers and their instruments in live and improvised electronic music. In these practices, musical machines – be they computers, mechanical assemblages or combinations of different sound-makers and processors – act as generators of musical material and sources of unpredictability with which to improvise. As a lens through which to consider these practices, we examine a number of different roles these musical machines may take on during improvised performances. These include running, playing, surprising, evolving, malfunctioning, collaborating and learning. We explore the values of these different roles to the improvising musician, and contextualise them within some broad and historical trends of contemporary music. Finally, we consider how this taxonomy may make us more open to the vital materialism of musical instruments, and offer novel insights into the flows of agency and interaction possibilities in technologically mediated musical practices.
We began writing the paper almost exactly one year ago, so it’s great to finally see it out in the world. This is the first paper I’ve had published by an academic journal, so something of a milestone for me. If you have any thoughts or comments about it, I’d love to hear them.
Home made modular synth cases
As I’ve built and acquired more Eurorack modules I’ve been slowly working towards a setup which doesn’t require much additional outboard gear. I’ve upgraded a bit at a time and ended up with four small cases. A couple of problems have arisen from this. First, that some of the modules are too deep to fit in certain spaces, so I’ve had to locate them in places which aren’t intuitive to use or particularly convenient. And second, that using separate cases means I can’t really pre-patch anything before a gig, so setting up is long, complicated and stressful.
The last show I played was with DJ Food at Levitation Festival (short clip here) and I knew we would only have a short turnaround before going on stage. So I trialled putting three of the units into a flight case so I could pre-patch and save some time. It worked pretty well.
Taking this as a practice run I decided it would be worthwhile to turn this into a more long term solution and build a box to house the modules in. I’d already made a couple of small cases for the deeper modules in my collection, which used 4mm MDF and extruded aluminium rails. So I knew the basic principle would work, and just needed to make them. Here’s one of the smaller cases, which I’ve just recently spray painted. These are the modules I’ve designed recently which all use an Arduino so just take a 5V power input. That is, apart from the Motor module which has its own 12V supply. I added the air vents to the sides primarily for the Motor module, which has some pretty big heat-sinks on the drivers. The 4mm square holes leave enough material for the sides to be rigid too.
The initial plan for the new one was to make a case which would be the same dimensions as a Technics SL-1200 turntable, for the primary reason that I have a ‘deck saver’ plastic lid which I don’t use, which would make a good lid for the unit for transporting the pre-patched modules. Testing a couple of orientations, the most efficient way seemed to be orientating it portrait-wise which would give three 69hp rows of 3U rackspace and one row of 1U. Surprisingly and serendipitously, using 4mm material this fits EXACTLY to the millimetre. The clearance of the unit allows for my deepest modules (Doepfer A-103 filters at over 50mm) to comfortably fit with some room for cabling, meaning no more awkward decisions about which module to put in an inconvenient place. I’m pleased with the outcome apart from the fact I made it very slightly too wide to fit the deck saver lid – somewhere in the design I added 4mm to the width, annoyingly. Not enough of an issue to re-cut though.
The other main intention with this build was to try to save money buying something off-the-peg. I’m fairly sure I have done that – fully made cases this size are wildly expensive – but this wasn’t cheap to make by any means, as there are lots of components apart from the case:
- Rails are extruded aluminium as sold by Synth Racks in the UK [link]
The case holds 69hp per row, so 8 pairs are required. I bought some of their old stock cheaply on ebay, which needed cutting to size and re-joining per strip. You can use M5 threaded rod to join two pieces. The end bolts are M5 too. The aluminium is soft enough that you can bolt into the cut end without needing to thread it. - Power for the whole case is a 2MS Row Power 45 module. It seems great so far, and should have enough wattage to run the modules I have. It’s not cheap though – and you need to buy both the power supply and cable for it extra!
- For power distribution I bought some ‘flying bus cables’ from Thonk. [link] The Row Power has two sockets and I daisy-chained the third. I still didn’t have enough sockets so made some passive bus boards from vero-board and 16-pin sockets, like the ones below but longer. To be honest it doesn’t feel ideal daisy-chaining them like this, but according to the Row Power user manual this is a legitimate way to do it.
- Finally spray paint. I’m not a huge fan of bare MDF with laser scorch marks, though I do have a lot of stuff like that mainly due laziness in not painting it. I bought cheap furniture primer from the local pound shop and then used some good quality spraypaint to finish. The reason for the unusual colours is that someone in my studios was offloading a bunch of half-used cans.
A couple of folks have asked for the vector files for these cases, which is the main reason for this post. Here they are as vector files:
Small case vector file (svg)
Large case vector file (svg)
If you end up making one of them, please let me know how you get on!
Musical interfaces marathon – NIME ’24 day 1
This week I’m at the NIME conference in Utrech – New Interfaces for Musical Expression. I’ve had a busy few months with gigging, conference presentations and co-writing a paper, so not had the energy or inclination to keep up to date with blogging. But after a couple of conversations yesterday about the benefits of regular informal writing and and posting, I’m back again with a few notes from the conference. These are accumlated thoughts, points of reference and idea-seeds rather than particualry well formulated notes. Presented here roughly in chronological order.
(as of date of wrting the papers aren’t publically available, I’ll add links later to access them)
Excellent to see Christian Faubel perform live with his piece titled “songs from my analogue utopia”. The setup is a series of tiny actuators flicking stretched elastic bands, which are amplified with contact mics. The whole array is set up on an overhead projector giving a zero-latency real-time projection of each individual percussive strike. The osciallating motors are triggered by analogue clock signals from a modular synth. I’ve come across some of Christian’s writing about entrainment of oscillators previously – so there may have been some of that going on. Clocks were running in and out of phase, generating interesting polyrhthyms with the delicate but rich pings. Great to see the processes up close, as we were invited as an audience to gather round for the set.
Also glad to watch Dylan Beattie perform live, my first experience in a concert setting having visited his studio previously.
Impressed Dylan brought 60kg of vinyl lathe equipment across on the train! His set featured real-time cutting of grooves into vinyl dubs, using a handheld homemade stylus/tattoo gun. Some great textures and serendipitous moments. I liked the liveness of the set, with certain abrupt drop-outs and dynamic changes which belied the intricate and fragile nature of the process.
Zeynep Özcan & Anıl Çamcı gave a really interesting paper on use of juggling with physical-digital interfaces. Neither of these are particularly areas of interest for me but the parallels between the rhythms and cycles of juggling and those of musical rhythms and loops were intriguing. The research involved voicing three juggling balls in different ways, with sensors responding to accelration, jerk and impact, and each of the balls given a specific different sounding voice. Of most interest was the discussion of failure – neither of the paper’s authors were experienced jugglers and, as such, their attempts at testing the interfaces involved many drops, fubmles, clashing and impacts which skilled jugglers would not incur. As their reserach progressed their juggling skills also improved – but they found the musical ouput of the devices became less interesting. They began to deliberately fail sometimes, dropping balls on purpose, acting out errors, reverting to less-skilled behaviour in order to reintegrate the more interesting musical gestures. “Feigning mistakes to retain some of the sonic affordances of failure,” to quote the paper. This isn’t something i’ve come across before, something to think about further.
You can now watch the paper presentation/video here:
I also gave my own paper on Wednesday morning, titled Ironing In The Creases: Developing An Idiosyncratic Electro-mechanical Musical Instrument By Reinforcing Its Faults. My intention was to talk about my making process and how it works in a cycle, including the key decision points where I acknowledge the aspects of a new development which are causing problems or issues, which can also potentially be benefits or produce interesting musical effects. My paper ended up being quite long, as I wanted to include lots of contextual information about thinking relating to the process, and also needed to establish some of the precedents and context for the project itself. Neeless to say it was tricky then to get it all into the 10 minutes allocated for the presentation. There’s a video version here which is essentially the same as what I presented:
I had some good feedback from other attendees including some questions that got me thinking. Responding to one question in the room I mentioned that I had some personal rules or an unwritten manifesto which had been guiding the project. I’ve never formally written this out, but have started to make notes towards doing so for myself.
Specifically these are things like:
- No direct playing. All sounds are played by the machine: I wouldn’t, for example, set up a beat and then do a synth solo over the top.
- No backing track. This has been a rule of mine for so long it’s second nature. Performing along to a linear recording restricts the option for pacing, live arranging the material, which is fundamental to any performance for me.
I’m not going to write them all out here, just a couple of points by way of illustration.
At the first evening concert, John Bowers played a few short sets using some strategies developed with Robin Foster around rummaging with various digital and algorithmic augmentations. The weird little garage unit at the venue gave it a classic noise gig vibe which worked realy well. Part of John’s approach is running several different mappings from the sensor inputs concurrently, then mixing between the outputs. This creates a system which is both responsive and playable, with seemingly infinite variation available.
An intense finish to the day came from Transsonic (Viola Yip/Nicola Hein) who played an absolutely searing noise set with handheld lasers and an integrated system of sound controller and distorted guitar. A dark room with only red lasers to provide light, I couln’t see quite what was happening – but the responsivity was apparent and the soundscape flitting around the powerful club system worked amazingly well.
Here’s a video version of their performance, submitted prior to the conference as far as I’m aware – play it loud!
The days are long and intense at NIME. The first day’s programme started at 9am and finished at 11pm. I think I counted about 16 papers and 12 performances I’d seen during the day, plus all the poster presentations and demos. So, necessarily this is just a sample of the highlights. I’ll likely post more later in the week, depending if I run out of energy beforehand. Luckily most of the venues here sell Club Mate.
Radio show selections: Splinter Orchestra and Plain Music Compilation
Notes on a couple of the pieces from this month’s radio show, episode 215 of Fractal Meat on a Spongy Bone.
I came across Splinter Orchestra via an essay by one of the group’s members, Jim Denley, in the excellent book The Aesthetics of Imperfection in Music and the Arts. I was struck by several aspects of the large ensemble improvising group’s approach. In particular the type of performance-to-microphone, using group improvisation and movement as a way of generating recorded compositions, as given in the description of a piece called “Spoke”.
“forming a circle around two omnidirectional mics situated either side of a mid-point, and that rather than rotate we move in our own time – in and out along a radius as if down the spokes of a wheel, towards and then away from the mics.”
What appeals to me is the use of physicality as a way of controlling the intensity and presence of each instrument. Like volume automation controlled by spatial distance. Since teaching some basics of field recording and live sound capture, I think about sound dispersal and microphone placement a lot – awareness of the inverse square law (meaning proximity to a speaker/microphone potentially has significantly more effect than common sense might suggest) helps consider how close and distant sound sources might appear in the ‘flattened’ mix that the microphone recording captures.
I generally enjoy hearing about artists’ self-imposed rules, manifestos and their justifications of them. I’ve been thinking about tuning systems recently, having just designed a turntable sequencer interface which can output discrete notes, and needing to make decisions about what those notes should be. (At the moment the module sets a low and high frequency, and divides the remaining tone space into equal segments – a reconfigurable scale which, with the combination of analogue inputs and digital processing, is likely different each time.) It’s refreshing to hear a group discuss their choice, especially in such a joyous and unapologetic way: “Splinter never tunes. … We’ve no formal agreement about systems of tonal organisation – we plunge into a seething-frequency sea without lifejjackets.”
The piece I’ve chosen for the radio show is First Tutti from the orchestra’s eponymous debut release as a 17 piece ensemble, which at times exemplifies this seething-frequency sea.
The new Plain Music compilation released by Japanese label tokinogake proposes to be a compilation of “works that are not in audio form”. It might be a challenge, then, to do them justice on the radio. I hope that playing some of these pieces without context doesn’t detract from the artists’ intentions.
The large (25 track) compilation comes with a zip file of documents, midi files, SuperCollider patches, illustrations and video clips to explain process and allow listeners to implement some of them themselves. There’s lots of computer music in here, as well as some more hands-on work like nnirror’s drone piece with a self-explanatory title: microcassette motor & AC power brick surrounding an inductor (a video of which, if further evidence of process is required, comes with the download). I enjoyed the diversity in the ways people had responded to the theme – with some pieces only presented as text scores, such as peeq’s Quiet Music (below). As is often the way with big compilations of interesting stuff, I’ve added a bunch of the pieces to my bank of tracks for forthcoming shows.
Notes from Innovation in Music 2024 conference, Oslo
Pretty much every conference I’ve attended I’ve found inspiring and motivating. It’s like sitting down and reading a whole pile of papers over a weekend, on disparate and unusual topics, often with some suprising stuff. InMus24 was no exception. I heard presentations on the social history of drum machines; intuition in the process of mastering audio; grammatical analysis of Ace of Bass lyrics; and plenty more. Below are a couple of things that stood out to me as particularly interesting.
Peter Vuust’s paper on the psychology of perception in music, Groove on the Brain, was a great start to the conference. I was familiar with some of the ideas from the Groove Workshop conference I attended last year, organised by Maria Witek who’s an expert in the field. Particularly, the notion that there’s a sweet spot on the spectrum between simple metronomic rhythm and complex syncopation, which follows an inverted u-shaped curve, and that it correlates to the types of rhythms that make listeners want to move, dance, and enjoy getting into the groove. To some degree it feels like common sense – that predictable patterns are too boring, and chaotic non-rhythm is too complex – but it’s interesting to see results from scientifically conducted studies that back it up. As an artist there’s no need to adhere to these rules, and there’s nothing to say that what might be considered objectively ‘groovier’ music is in any way better or worse. I’m interested in this as something to potentially play with or push against – playing with the level of complexity of rhythm, timing variations, loss of synchrony. Other areas of the keynote talked about the way people’s brains work in predicting rhythm, expectations of repetition and difference, counting off patterns of beats and how that effects perception – all of which I feel can inform new ideas for pieces of music.
Innovation being the foundation of the conference, there were several technical papers which gave me further food for thought. Jan-Olof Gullo discussed microphones, placement and approaches to recording live sound. In a slightly cruel trick he played two recordings and asked for feedback on the sound, telling us that the second was recorded with a certain fancy stereo microphone. On receiving some typically subjective descriptions of the second sounding more full, clearer or detailed (to paraphrase), he revealed the second was actually recorded with a pair of cheap and popular vocal mics, revealing how difficult it is to really tell what sounds good and what doesn’t. Did the second piece actually sound better or did the new information trick us into thinking so? There’s something there about acousmatic music and Schaeffer’s reduced listening – it’s impossible for sound to be heard without context, and even false contextual information can change what we think we hear. A theme running through several of the papers was around trusting intuition, trusting our hearing, ignoring technically ‘correct’ approaches in favour of a better sound. All very much things I try to implement in my own practice, and refreshing to hear from people with decades of technical experience and expertise, who I might otherwise have expected to have a stricter adherence to conventional practices.
The title of Ingvild Koksvik’s paper particularly intrigued me: Exploring the Unsayable Aspects of Musical Ideas in Record Production. Many of the sessions took place in a multichannel playback setup, and focused on Dolby Atmos recordings and techniques. My practice could not really be more different from Ingvild’s: I’m not interested in surround/immersive/multichannel audio, I don’t write ‘songs’ as such, I prefer making single take live dubs to more considered multitrack recordings, and my music is generally quite noisy and messy by design. I was intrigued by the idea of the unsayable, which seemed to be something like the vibe or feel of a song, in the way Ingvild described it – the spirit of the music, the intention of the song. The way I work, setting out to make a piece tends to have a fairly loose intention, only the kernel of an idea about form and structure, and I try and uncover or tease out the ‘spirit’ of the piece rather than impose it on what I’m making. But recognising what is working, how to facilitate that spirit, and narrowing down towards an intention is fundamental to my practice. Ingvild introduced Joel Hamilton’s notion of the aesthetic compass as something that can guide us towards the final finished piece. I think perhaps the difference in our approach, really, is that I don’t start out on the journey with a map or a particular direction in mind.
In my own paper I talked about using ‘messing about’ as a process for creative projects, in making instruments and devices as well as when performing or recording. I was pleased that there were resonances and points of connection with plenty of the other presenters (one paper on the creative use of distortion even quoted the same line from an article I quoted from), and had some good chats with folks about some of the ideas afterwards.
There’s loads more I could write about from InMusic24, and perhaps I will at some point. The past few months have been pretty hectic, which is why this is my first blog post in a while. I’ve spent some time writing papers and conference submissions, making some new things in the workshop, and playing gigs in Birmingham and Berlin. Things with hard deadlines that all happened a bit too close to one another. I’m looking forward to a bit more of a balance schedule the next few weeks, and hopefully the capacity to post here a bit more often again.
clacky keyboard
Spending more time writing recently – journalling, blogging and writing some articles and papers – I’d become a bit frustrated with my cheap, light-touch bluetooth keyboard. I felt like I needed something chunkier and more tactile, slightly more responsive and nicer to use. My second critera was price: I got this one for about £30. Finally I wanted to have separate number pad keys, so didn’t want anything too compact. In part I wanted to be able to play Caves of Qud properly again at some point, and in part for nostalgia for when I used to use an external num-pad for selecting patterns on Fruity Loops for live sets.
I like the colour sheme – off-white, dark grey and orange – and coincidentally it matches various other things on my desk, including stationery and the book I’m currently reading. It also reminds me of a Roland TR-707, one of my favourite drum machines. In fact, the 707 is the only model from the range I’ve actually had a play with, and its chunkiness, and plasticky feel is a bit smilar to this keyboard too.
Though it wasn’t a factor in choosing a new keyboard, the sounds it makes have taken a bit of getting used to. The soft-touch keyboard was almost silent, and this one is very clacky indeed. I was immediately reminded of the Mechanical Keyboard Sounds album released by Trunk Records a few years back. Somewhere between a novelty record, an archival document and an ASMR collection, the tracks feature typing on various retro and modern setups, with different degrees of lubrication and modding. The mechanical keyboard scene is a rabbit hole I can’t afford to be drawn into, either in terms of money or time, but I’m now accutely aware of some upgrades I could make to the way my tying sounds.
Science fictions and self reliance
This afternoon I’m joining a zoom call with some first year graphic design students at Sheffield Hallam – they’re to be tasked with making a video in response to some of my music, “using experimental video, typography and use After Effects to blend videos (for the first time).” I wrote the following to see if these might be fun jumping-off points for their projects.
There are two fictional narratives I have applied to my work. First, the escaped clanking replicator; second, the post-apocalyptic music machine.
One facet of Mechanical Techno is that of recycling existing and unwanted music. The records I use, either to sample from or to create trigger records, are white labels rescued from bargain bins and junk shops. Artefacts that may once have had cultural and monetary value but which have found themselves dispossessed, thrown away as worthless1. Mechanical Techno recycles the physical objects and recycles the sounds stamped into them. The output is new music, and indeed new records. The machine eats old music and records and spits out new ones.
The ‘grey goo scenario’ describes the following hypothetical apocalyptic situation: Nanobots are in common use for various tasks including building and repairing technology. By their nature, large amounts of these devices are necessary. As such, an efficient way to maintain sufficient quantities of nanobots is to have them capable of reproducing: robots which can build more robots. In the grey goo scenario, these nanobots run out of control, converting all available matter into more and more nanobots, an exponentially accelerating snowball effect which eventually turns all the molecules in the universe into grey nanobot goo. Zooming out from the microscopic scale, a replicating machine could be imagined which would build clones of itself. The ‘escaped clanking replicator’ is a large machine-producing machine run amok, like a giant version of one of the nanobots in the grey goo scenario2. If the Mechanical Techno machine continues to run indefinitely, perhaps it will eventually produce so much music and so many records that no others exist in the universe.
The second science fiction trope I’ve considered in relation to my work has been to think about music making post-apocalypse. In the Fallout video game franchise, much technology is salvageable from the past. Armour, weapons and ammunition can be cobbled together from leftover scrap. The results don’t look elegant or work very effectively, but they get the job done. In the post-apocalyptic wasteland depicted in the TV show Station Eleven, smartphones and computers have long been rendered useless, relegated to the status of museum exhibits. Even with the possibility of generating electricity, these devices are too complex and too reliant on external networks to have any practical use.
Whilst initially made using hardware drum machines, synthesizers and samplers, nowadays the majority of electronic music is created ‘in the box’. A program like Ableton Live can be used to generate sequences, sounds, effects and automation. Software provides emulations of classic drum machines, tape recorders, effects units, orchestras, and other technologies. Increasingly software follows a subscription model and requires authentication of purchase over an internet connection.
Mechanical Techno isn’t the usual way to make electronic music. Some of the sound sources come from commercially available synths and effects pedals. But much of it is generated from handmade devices, hacked and modified objects and repurposed vinyl records. The process is clumsy and the resulting music sometimes sounds a bit wrong, but it gets the job done. As such, Mechanical Techno could be imagined as a future-proof, post-apocalyptic music. It isn’t reliant on computers, on a software subscription, or on an internet connection.
- As Kyle Devine writes in Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music (p119), ‘Plastics perish. In addition to the challenges and hazards of producing polymer compounds, and in addition to the social inequalities and environmental infractions of record pressing facilities, plastic recordings that reach consumers eventually wear out, or become individually unwanted, culturally unfashionable, or technologically obsolete. Disposal and dispossession are the versos of newness and possession.’ ↩︎
- Both of these are paraphrased from two Wikipedia pages, Grey Goo and Self-Replicating Machine. ↩︎
Five ways of using contact mics
Following on from the recent post about DIY turntable styluses, here are some other uses for contact mics. When I used to teach the Experimental Sound Art evening class I made four suggestions for ways to use contact mics: amplifying small objects, amplifying large objects, amplified surface (scraping table), and making an ‘instrument’. These are covered below, but I’m glad now to add ‘DIY stylus’ as a fifth category.
A good approach I’ve found for contact mic explorations is to use some sort of portable amplification and headphones, so you can monitor what sounds you’re getting in real time. Handheld recorders (like those made by Zoom or Tascam) are good for this as they have easy to use inputs. I used to use a Zoom H4 and have two contact mics attached, then listen on headphones, choosing later whether to use the channels individually or in stereo. One thing to bear in mind is that piezo transducers can output quite loud sounds as well as more subtle ones. Handling noise in particular can be quite harsh – sticking the contact mics down, accidentally knocking them, etc. So I recommend taking the headphones off whilst adjusting the position and gradually bringing the volume up to a level where you can hear what’s going on.
There are plenty of ways to attach contact mics but the main thing to remember is in the name – contact. The disk needs to be secured in such a way that the vibration of the object can pass into the metal of the disk. I often use electrical tape, as it’s not too messy when you peel it off, though it’s also not particularly secure. For permanent attachment it’s possible to drill through and bolt contact mics (thanks Sam Underwood for that tip), or I’ll sometimes use two part epoxy glue (like araldite) if it’s attaching to something hard and not too bendy. This could probably be a whole post on its own, so I’ll keep it brief.
I’m not going to cover making contact mics here, or talk about impedance and pre-amp options, but might do a separate post about these topics further down the line. A great resource on all of this is Nicolas Collins’ Handmade Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking, which I would recommend to anyone interested.
1. Stylus and scraping implement
Over on Instagram, Michael Cella made a great stylus with a 3D printed housing, playable by hand on records and other surfaces. The stylus end was essentially a pin attached to a contact mic, housed in a chunky wand (It reminded me of the Magic Pencil from British kids’ TV show Words and Pictures). Having the holdable part isolated from the pickup is great to avoid handling noise and the potential buzz/hum that can occur when physically touching the metal parts of the piezo disk.
Pretty much anything can be used as the ‘needle’ part of the stylus. Just stick something onto it, and find some things to scrape it on. Some examples might be: cocktail stick, bamboo skewer, knitting needle, drinking straw, biro, stick, jam jar lid, clothes peg, shard of glass… In one workshop I led, a participant sellotaped a ping-pong ball to a contact mic, then spent the entire session with headphones on scraping it along the walls of the room, and every surface they could find. The ‘stylus’ material makes a huge difference to the sound, as does the choice of surfaces you ‘read’ with it.
The size of the stylus is potentially interesting to explore too. I’ve done a couple of projects with amplified sticks and other materials, scraping them along the floor, tracing out spaces for their sonic textures. Field Tracing (2017) maps a terrain in the Black Forest using four different materials, the recordings and videos played simultaneously in an installation along with the styluses themselves. For A Tracing of a Single Tide I walked the length of the beach at Walton-on-the-Naze with a stylus made from driftwood.
2. Amplifying small objects
Possibly the most obvious way to use a contact mic is to amplify the small sounds you can make with a single individual object. It’s fun just to try lots of things out, and for workshops I had a collection of both prosaic and unusual items for people to explore (charity shops are a great resource, as is the pound shop). Off the top of my head some favourites were: pie tray, comb, ladle, slinky spring, pine cone, egg slicer, toy cymbal…
The way you attach the contact mic can make a big difference to the sound. It’s important that the ‘contact’ is good, but also that the object is free to vibrate – so it’s a fine balance. Too much sellotape and your teaspoon will no longer ring when you flick it. Too little and the piezo will fall straight off. It also makes a difference where you hold the object, and how you activate it. Sometimes dangling the item by the wire of the contact mic works well, to let the whole unit vibrate freely. Flicking, brushing, scraping, bouncing, blowing, swinging, twisting, bowing or bending an object may or may not reveal some hidden sound – the joy is in finding out.
Working with metal objects is sometimes tricky, as they can short the connections on the contact mic leading to the sound dropping out (this isn’t dangerous, as there is very little current in the audio circuit). The area to avoid is the side of the disk with the white circle – if an electrical connection is made between here and the edge of the brass disk, the sound will stop. One workaround is to cover the back of the disk with electrical tape to insulate it. It’s also possible (though a bit tricky) to stretch a balloon over a contact mic. Be aware though that any additional dampening will also potentially muffle or change the sound you get – again it’s a process of testing it out. This came up in a workshop with someone pressing a contact mic into a ball of wire wool – it sounded lovely and crunchy but intermittently cut out. We got around it with the balloon technique.
Adam Bohman uses contact mics on small objects to great effect. In improvised performance he uses a table crowded with wine glasses, springs, pieces of polystyrene, clothes pegs and other (carefully selected) tat, and plays these with violin bows, files and other activators. In order to avoid having to mic-up every item individually, he uses clip-on contact mics, and has volume pedals at his feet to mute the signals as he changes mic positions.
3. Amplifying large objects
Larger objects are fun to amplify too. Examples might be bins, fire extinguishers, windows, railings, ladders, a playground slide, a bicycle wheel, a radiator, a sculpture… Again placement and attachment will give varying results and it’s usually best to try a few positions before committing. Here a stereo pair of contact mics can give great results. I once recorded a bottle bank with two contact mics and my zoom recorder, then did the recycling: it sounded uncannily like being inside the bin. It’s worth bearing in mind that attaching wires to large objects in public places might look strange or even suspicious to some people. I’ve never had any issues, or even been approached, but it’s often been in the back of my mind.
Again there are different approaches to ‘playing’ the large object once it has been amplified. Drumming, scraping, flicking, etc all work – and the choice of beater or activator, and where you strike it, can make a big difference. Placing contact mics on a window can sometimes pick up sounds from outside, but they will be ‘filtered’ by the material properties of the glass itself – in practice this means traffic rumble is heard more than, say, bird song. Rain or hail directly hitting the glass would produce great results. Artist Melanie Clifford has worked extensively with amplified panes of glass, often amplifying barely audible high frequency resonances for use in her video work.
4. Scraping table / amplified surface
Almost the exact inverse of the stylus – what if we amplified the record instead?
To make a scraping table involves amplifying the surface and then using it to amplify other objects interacting with it. Again, a pair of contact mics can be used and the resulting recordings can be used to make interesting stereo interactions. The choice of surface is important: a resonant table works well, a dull and deadened table less so. Once a surface is miked up, try: spinning coins, rolling marbles, scattering rice, pouring water, releasing small creatures…
One of my favourite recordings, which I still use often in performances, is the shelf inside a pigeon shed with a pair of contact mics: scrabbling claws dominate, but the pigeons’ cooing comes through surprisingly clearly too (presumably in part through vibrations down their legs). I’ve also made an amplified surface from an old snare drum skin, and a video of playing some objects with it: here. Other things that work well as surfaces are vinyl or shellac records, cymbals, baking trays, corrugated cardboard, the lid off a turntable, plastic chairs.. Again, the material properties of the surface make a big difference, so it’s good to experiment.
Lee Patterson has used contact mics in lots of innovative ways, one of which is a metal plate he uses for amplifying springs and perfume bottles. The plate itself is suspended on springs to isolate it from external vibration which might cause feedback. The resonance of the plate interacts with the springs he attaches to its edge, creating a complex and responsive system capable of a vast range of sounds from very minimal and subtle movements.
5. An “instrument”
Though it can seem quite a daunting prospect, it’s possible to build an instrument of sorts by combining different objects with an amplified surface or box. Baking tins, jewellery boxes, tupperware, drawers etc can work nicely. Once the box is amplified, anything attached to it can be used as a sound source. Elastic bands stretched across make almost-convincing guitar and double-bass sounds. Screws, nails, nuts and bolts can be attached. Anything that twangs or can be plucked works well – springs, cocktail sticks, rulers, brush bristles, hairbands… Choice of plucker / beater/ scraper matters a lot too, so there are lots of options. Here are a few photos from instruments made during one session of the Sound Art course: [link].
Hugh Davies called this type of instrument a ‘Sho-zyg’ named after a volume from an encyclopaedia he turned into an instrument. Anton Mobin calls his instruments ‘prepared chambers’ and they feature springs, motors, contact mics and speakers – making versatile and playable systems for performance and recording.
A handful of decent music podcasts
Podcasting feels like one of the exciting frontiers of DIYism. Pretty much any topic, niche TV programme, hobby or interest will have a couple of podcasts about it. There’s scope for different levels of professionalism, and different flavours of presentation, from slick radio journalism to bedroom ruminating to chatty conversations. I listen to podcasts a lot, generally when I’m out walking, on public transport or working on something which doesn’t require my full attention. I’ll often fixate on a particular show, binge-listening till I lose interest or find a new one that draws my attention. Not all of the podcasts I listen to are music focused, but here are some of my recent favourites. Check them out ‘wherever you get your podcasts,’ as they say.
A classic format that does what it says on the tin. Musician Huw V Williams chats with a different player (mostly) from the British free improv scene. The interviews tend to be fairly long, usually over an hour, and they’re generally lightly edited conversations, so you really get a feel for people’s approach and attitude towards their work. It’s nice to see a few folks I know on the list, but also great to hear about new players, or put a voice to a name in some instances. There are some short sections of music which give context, something (sometimes missing in music podcasts, doubtless due to copyright / content match issues. There are two aspects I find fascinating in these conversations: the weird and wonderful routes people have taken to get where they are, and detailed discussion of their practical and theoretical approach to improvised music making. A good example is the first episode with saxophonist Dee Byrne – though because the sound quality improves later in the run, be aware this one is a bit rough round the edges.
Hosted by Ràdio Web MACBA in Barcelona (one of several longstanding shows on the institution’s platform), Probes is an in-depth timeline of developments in musical instrument design and technique, covering the history of avant-garde music. Written and presented by musician and author Chris Cutler, it’s full of examples of unusual instruments and their stories. There are loads of audio examples in this show, often several minutes of music at a time, which really helps to contextualise the ideas he’s discussing. Each show is thematically grouped around a specific development or line of enquiry – which Cutler calls ‘probes’. This might be a compositional component (there’s an episode on glissandi), or a specific technique (see prepared piano), or a particular instrument and its extensions.
While the episodes are in-depth, they are firmly focused on western classical music. Though various types of music and instrumentation from the global south do get mentioned, they’re only really qualified as being important probes once their contributions to the western art music tradition can be established. Cutler is aware of this, and does try to be expansive, but at times I found this frustrating. With the discussion of such a large number of instruments, composers and musicians there’s also the potential issue that some information has to be left out. It was intriguing, for example, to hear about Percy Grainger’s utopian ‘free music’ machines, but it was not mentioned that Grainger was a staunch and active white supremecist – an important caveat when considering the impact his ideas may have had on musical development.
Probes feels like a series of lectures rather than a chatty and conversational podcast. As such it requires a different type of listening. I’ve spoken to Sam Underwood, who recommended the podcast to me, about this – needing to go back through episodes and make notes. It’s a great series for broadening understanding of instrument design specifically, something both me and Sam are researching and working with.
A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs
I find the scope and ambition of this project absolutely astounding. Andrew Hickey is planning on releasing an episode of this podcast every week for the next ten years. Each show is meticulously researched and written in full, and presented by Hickey with short excerpts of each of the tracks he mentions. There’s also a mixcloud for each episode featuring all the songs in full. It’s an incredible resource. I’m about 80 episodes into the series so far, of the 187 which have been published. If it keeps to schedule it should finish some time in 2028.
The series begins sometime in the 1930s and there’s an extensive exploration of the roots of rock n roll as a genre – genealogy feeding in from western swing, doo-wop, southern gospel, and a dozen other genres which were new to me or too closely related for me to discern. Hickey discusses developments in music production (tape echo in rockabilly); the introduction of specific rhythms, riffs and arrangements; behind the scenes figures including managers, radio DJs and tour promoters; and unpicks the complex rhizomatic relationships between musicians, bands and labels. Refreshingly, he’s careful about giving context to potentially problematic material, and highlights the racism, misogyny and homophobia so inherent in the industry (and society as a whole) in the decades he’s discussing. Abusive and egotistical rock stars aren’t given a free pass, Hickey clearly identifying the kind of toxic behaviour which more mainstream rock music histories might gloss over.
While the stories are fascinating, personal taste will dictate which parts of the series are more interesting. The biographical information is at points incredibly detailed, to the extent that I might sometimes tune out if it’s an era I’m not particularly invested in. Sam, who also recommended this podcast to me, has come across episodes later in the series that stretch to four hours long. For me this is a podcast to listen to whilst doing other things. Hickey’s delivery is direct and to the point and I find it somewhat meditative and relaxing.
So far I found the first couple of dozen episodes of most interest. The way that a genre’s sound evolves from distinct and overlapping parts. Aspects are emphasised and repeated and become part of the makeup of the genre. Accidents of coincidence, workarounds or financially motivated decisions can steer creative outcomes in unexpected ways. At the best moments, Hickey’s skill in following connections – social, technological, aesthetic, cultural – and detailed: drawing out of the causal relationships creates a compelling and inspiring body of research I keep coming back to.
Switching away from music history, and switching genres again, No Tags is very much about present day electronic music and club culture. Presented by Chal Ravens and Tom Lea, both music journalists who cut their teeth with FACT magazine, their stated intention is to catalogue and archive snapshots of underground music culture that might otherwise go undocumented. Breaking from the hype-cycle focus of much coverage of electronic music, it’s great to hear about scenes and artists that are working away in the background without necessarily feeding the content machine. Most episodes feature an in-depth interview bookended with some chat.
The episodes do feel like interviews rather than the less formal conversations of, for example, the Improvised Music Agenda podcast, with questions probing the guests’ professional and personal histories and how their ethics feed into their work. Community building is a recurrent theme, with guests discussing festival curation, radio mentoring and queer clubbing. The presenters’ passion for both the music and the scenes and connections around it is infectious, and the guests are well chosen to highlight key figures to their particular niches. While the presentation is quite polished and the conversations on the whole quite rigorously journalistic, there are some fun and silly bits too, and when guests aren’t in the studio the chat can turn slightly gossipy, which I like too. Ending on film chat each episode is also a welcome gear change..
I heard of this podcast directly from No Tags, when the interview with New York’s Sorry Records covered some of the city’s clubbing history and particularly the loft party scene. Tim Lawrence is an expert on New York in the 70s and particularly David Mancuso, whose loft parties were hugely influential to both the counterculture and modern club culture. I first came across cohost Jeremy Gilbert through an essay on Deleuze and improvised music1, which is still a text I refer back to often. I’d also read his more recent book Twenty First Century Socialism, and somehow assumed his interests and output had moved away from music and more squarely into writing about politics. So his involvement here was something of a surprise to me.
If podcasts generally sit on a spectrum with conversation at one end and lecture at the other, this is right in the middle, feeling like a very focused panel discussion. It’s very detailed and very in-depth, to the point that it can feel as though it’s covering the same ground sometimes. But the depth of knowledge and the connections the presenters draw are formidable, and really informative as to the roots of modern club culture and indeed electronic music.
Mancuso’s loft parties began as a staged environment for friends to take acid in: colourful decor, organic flowing music (from the atmospheric to the ecstatic), a diverse and eccentric crowd, and a focus on freedom of expression at a time when society was incredibly restrictive, particularly for people of colour and gay people. The podcast explores the social and economic factors that led to the existence of these parties, the practical aspects of how they worked and who was involved, and the knock-on effects across culture and society. The scope is at once broad-reaching and incredibly focused. It’s extremely in-depth and thorough in both its analysis and detail. Music features throughout, though in tantalisingly small doses.
Another aspect I particularly enjoy is the overtly practice-research method of ‘putting your money where your mouth is’: the longstanding loft-party inspired clubnight series ran by the presenters, Beauty and the Beat. Modelled on Mancuso’s loft parties (right down to the audiophile Klipschorn speakers), the events aim to capture the spirit of the loft and allow contemporary audiences to experience something like it. Throughout the podcast the practicalities of running the club are discussed in detail too, and it gives weight to the theory and discussion to know it’s grounded in this way.
- Gilbert, Jeremy (2004). Chapter 6 Becoming-Music: The Rhizomatic Moment of Improvisation. In Ian Buchanan & Marcel Swiboda (eds.), Deleuze and Music. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 118-139. ↩︎
DIY styluses for playing mangled-up records
I was asked recently for some advice about turntable styluses for playing broken and mangled records. Flo from Plattenbau Kru – who use stickers, scratches, cracks and breaks to modify their vinyl – said the ‘project is using up A LOT’, as might be expected. Offering a couple of suggestions led me down a bit of a rabbit hole, thinking about how people use alternatives to standard cartridges and needles to generate different effects.
Flo mentioned John Cage’s cactus stylus, which is something of a legend. In fact I’m not aware of him using it to play back records (though I could be wrong). There is some great footage of Cage playing the cactus as an instrument, and I believe that the amplification is provided via turntable cartridges (as opposed to contact mics as might be expected nowadays). A similar approach – replacing the needle in the cartridge with different material – is used by Andrea Borghi to play stone and marble disks. Borghi uses a piece of wire, with a physical twist and a fork like a snake’s tongue (as pictured on the front page of his website), to enable him to read the rough textures of the different materials, creating crackling and ever-changing textural soundbeds. Certain of his other compositions use close-miked crackling fires and other parallel pointillist sounds. Recently doing the rounds online have been clips of Leonel Vasquez’ Canto Rodado sculptures: rotating stacks of rocks with acoustically amplified scraping styluses, creating multi-pitched drones with some textural clattering. I can’t quite tell whether there’s some digital augmentation to the sound too, the output is so smooth and melodious.
Records can really be used to vibrate or activate any material that’s small enough to fit in the groove and light enough to be moved by it. It’s particularly satisfying to listen to a record acoustically via a paper cup with a pin attached to the bottom of it. Michael Ridge has used a plastic bank note to play sounds acoustically (amongst loads of great noise experiments on his youtube channel). One of my favourite explorations of acoustic activation is by Sseeaan Rroowwee, who uses screwed up balls of paper on a pair of decks, like in this live set. The sharp corners can contact the records at multiple points, generating sound from different parts of the record at the same time. Multiple balls of paper can create an extremely quiet cacophony, many tinny sounds playing concurrently. Physically manipulating the paper changes the contact points and hence the grooves – it’s an incredibly subtle and engaging performance. At the other extreme of multiple, changing points of contact is Evicshen’s stylus glove – fingernails made from styluses which provide a direct and tactile interface with her cast and modified disks.
An invaluable resource for turntable experimentation is the catalogue to the Broken Music exhibition in 1989, edited by Ursula Block and Michael Glasmeier. A quick glance through brought up Laurie Anderson’s turntable violin with stylus bow (a precursor to her perhaps better known tape bow violin); Joseph Beuys’ 1958 Stummes Grammophon (with a bone in place of the tone arm) and 1969/81 untitled gramophone with an amplified sausage attached to the soundbox; and details from pieces by Mauricio Kagel’s works including a dining fork and a sharp metal finger attachment being used to play records.
My own solution to playing mangled and abrasive records has been to use contact mics attached to a headshell, with screw mounts for different materials. There’s a similarity with gramophone needle attachments, which has reminded me that for acoustic shellac record players, alternative materials could be used to change the tone and volume of the playback. Steel gramophone needles are available in different loudnesses (presumably relating to the stiffness of the material) and sometimes bamboo needles were used for quieter playback. With my own headshell I’ve generally used cocktail sticks, kebab skewers, wire, springs, and plastic strimmer-blade line.
Most recently I wanted to play back a ‘tone’ record with lots of raised stickers on it, so didn’t want something that would damage the disk – fishing line proved very effective and also solved the difficult issue of making both sides of the stylus the exact same length to make contact with the record at the same time.
There’s lots more to say about alternative styluses, so this might be the first in a series of posts. And that’s before considering alternatives to turntables, alternatives to records, and other ways to read inscriptions by tracing a line.
Graham Dunning 