musical instruments
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Resonant Thoughts: Tom Jenkinson (aka Squarepusher) On Instruments
“With some of the instruments I’ve used, people would be surprised about some of the results I’ve got out of them because they’re not designed to do certain things and yet, if you put your mind to it and really get to grips with how it’s built and not the manufacturer’s intentions, any machine will Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Jacques Attali’s “Noise” (1977)
“In music, the instrument often predates the expression it authorizes…it contributes, through the possibilities it offers, to the birth of a new music, a renewed syntax.” -Jacques Attali, Noise, p. 35. Continue reading
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A Forest Xylophone Plays Bach
This is a charming video, but it also illustrates some deeper ideas: • Composition. It shows how a piece of music can be rendered on an unusual instrument and remain recognizable. • Instrument. It shows how a musical instrument can be fashioned out of descending wooden steps and a falling ball. • Agency. It shows Continue reading
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Interface: On The Ergonomics Of Musical Instruments
“Most of the works are not about something–they are not trying to tell something–but they are more made like interfaces for the viewer.” – Cevdet Erek Recently I came across the music of the Turkish artist and musician Cevdet Erek, who creates sound art installation works that deal with sounds, space, and rhythm. Here is some Continue reading
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On Techlust: Native Instruments’ Maschine
I’m at Tekserve, in the audio department, and I spot a beauty: Native Instruments’ Maschine, a hardware-software rhythm machine. I move in for a closer inspection. Its top is made of metal and I run my fingers across the smooth, cool brushed surface. I pick up the musical object off the display table and assess Continue reading
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The Sound of Vuvuzelas
“I hate it when I go to a vuvuzela concert and then people start playing football! It’s so annoying!” – YouTube viewer In last month’s Wire magazine, Marcus Boon wrote a thoughtful end piece on the phenomenon of vuvuzelas at last summer’s World Cup in South Africa. If you remember, vuvuzelas are those small plastic Continue reading
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Interviews with Roger Linn
Instrument designer and musician Roger Linn is perhaps most famous for inventing the first drum machines (in the early 1980s) to use digitally sampled drum sounds, the LM-1 and LinnDrum. In the years since, Linn teamed up with Akai to invent the MPC-series of drum machines/sequencers, and lately Linn has turned his attention to making Continue reading
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The Hang Drum: Real and Virtual
Do you like the sounds of steel pans and gamelans? Then you might really be intrigued by the sound of the Hang, a percussion instrument created and hand-built by the Swiss company PANart (Felix Rohner and Sabina Scharer) since 2000. The Hang consists of two steel sheets welded together to make a convex shape, a little Continue reading
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