beamfoundation.org Blog

This weekend we played a show at the Bellingham Electronic Arts Festival (BEAF). A good time was had by all, we made some new friends, and heard some great, and not so great (you know who you are), new electronic music.

One of the concert venues at BEAF is the American Museum of Radio and Electricity, which made the trip worth it in itself. We saw, and toggled, some incredible knobs and switches, the likes of which just aren’t made these days. This place has some outstanding, one of a kind, pieces of gear from the dawn of the radio era. (Plus a really great RCA ribbon mic.)

One of the things that really interests us here at BEAM, obviously, is the intersection of music, technology and culture. Our raison d’etre here is bridging the gap between instrumental virtuosity, and technological sound and interaction. Musical technology is always at the forefront of a culture’s technological development. This pictures below are from a telegraph machine, developed in France. This being the dawn of the radio communications era, Telegraphy was in its infancy, and most of the workforce was not educated on a typewriter or stenography keyboard. However, there was a large tradition of musical virtuosity in Europe, and the makers of this telegraph leveraged that colloquial knowledge to soften the learning curve on their technology.

As you can see, the machines below have piano keyboards, but these are in fact telegraph machines. This concept resonates with us here at BEAM. One of our primary philosophies is that traditional musical virtuosity and skill must be drawn upon when utilizing new computer music technologies. Years of technique that the instrumentalist builds can bridge the gap between classical chamber music and new experimental computer music. By creating a hybrid form of the traditional and cutting edge, we can create well performed music that speaks with the tools of this century.

This idea was not lost on those building technologies at the turn of the last century.

For a long time I played only alternate controllers. I worked closely with Don Buchla on both Thunder and Lightning, contributing ideas, testing, and even wrote the manual on one. These were refined and knowable devices and they reflected, through our collaboration, much of what I personally wanted in a controller.

For a period of years these were my main instruments. I extended their function through Max patches and performed with Lightning regularly (who could forget my big hit: Streaked Pontiac). It was fun to push things around with light or your little finger. Yet after years of investing myself in these fine instruments I reverted. Back to a hopped up guitar with all kinds of sensors and pitch extraction and real strings that break at the wrong time.

What happened? A true story: Carlos Santana visited Zeta and took me for a high speed barely controlled ride up 880 in a black BMW.  We were talking about “tone”. As he tried to keep the car near one of his chosen lanes, he kept rifling through a box of cassettes punching in some Trane and Miles and would forward to a specific spot and crank it up and we would listen. After several examples, he looked me in the eye and said ” I want to be able to take a note and squeeze it like a lemon and see it drip.”  What could I do but agree.

Now this is the challenge. It seems we do not yet have the ability to do this at either end of the chain. The dimensions of what can be controlled in synthesis and how we extract this needed information from (presently) physical gestures is getting better (this is a fun topic we should explore later).  Yet we have a problem.  We have to make a rock so big we can’t lift it.

By the time we have a controller with sufficient dimensionality and range of response it will be hard to play. This will require practice and a repertoire and time until we have any virtuosity to marvel at. Novelty alone will not fuel this cycle. Current musical needs are met by current instruments.

Of course you can make a controller-generator so simple dummies can play it and then only dummies will. We have ourselves a fine conundrum. 

In order to analyze why new instruments or alternate controllers have not yet happened we should start by discussing what makes a good instrument. What set of characteristics makes a violin, saxophone or a tabla beloved and accepted while another set creates a novelty instrument like a gazoo or instruments that never enter wide use such as the glass harmonica?

It’s clear that there is no single answer since there is no single universal instrument (save voice) so there exists a wide range of needed instruments. Yet with all this “need” from the experimental community we have yet to come up with a single instrument with any persistence or acceptance.

One major axis you can examine is expressiveness vs. polyphony. A clarinet persists along with the piano. IMO the violin is the current hi point on this curve.

Another good parameter is evenness across range. Yet not too even. Maybe it is a human trait to embrace imperfection or the failure of technology but most lasting instruments have some discontinuity – as you change registers, go to unwound strings, overblow. etc. Notice xylophones & marimbas tend to be more linear and these are more readily captured with an alternate controller.

You can’t put too much emphasis on dynamic range (oboe)but range of tone is very important – expressiveness again.

And the User Interface. How, as a species, we have tortured and contorted ourselves to master an instrument with only some slight relief (cutaways on a guitar, Boehm flute). Ease of use may make the controller less desirable.