This is a wonderful video of CHARLES COHEN at The BUCHLA MUSIC EASEL a new short film by Alex Tyson on Vimeo. Since our first meeting back in 1997, Charles has a way with this synthesizer that’s been nothing but a pleasure for me to hear.

This colorful video features sound artist Charles Cohen improvising on a 1970’s Buchla Music Easel. This extremely rare instrument is one of Don Buchla’s 200 series. Buchla (a pioneer of audio synthesis) only manufactured 14 of these units. The entire film was edited from an hour-long set of free improvisation, with audio was taken directly from Charles’ mixing board.

All of the photography and editing was produced by Alex Tyson, a sound and video artist from Pennsylvania. The film was shot in 16:9 720p High Definition format, using the Letus35 Extreme and a 35mm LensBaby 3GPL.

Hal Rammel gave me the license to make my own instruments in 1990. Tonight I learned from Hal that a web page is up about the wonderful exhibition of experimental musical instruments he curated, “The Shapes of Sound: Musical Instruments and the Imagination in the Midwest.”

The show was held in late 1997 at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I was among the 14 artist-inventors who had their instruments displayed. I also gave a brief performance in the show. Visit the page at www.woodlandpattern.org/gallery/shapes_of_sound.shtml

Many photographs from the show are on this page with Hal Rammel’s catalog essay. To learn more about his fascinating writing, visual art, and music, please visit Hal’s homepage, his MySpace page, and YouTube.

More video interviews with students from my 2008 Instrument Construction course at SAIC have been uploaded.

• SAIC Student Rob Martens: Evil Brother Of Snap, Crackle and Pop Martens?
  http://www.gearwire.com/theramin-instrument-construction.html
• (Part 1) SAIC Student Bethany Childs Tempts The Fury Of Neptune
  http://www.gearwire.com/conchshell-instrument-construction-001.html
• (Part 2) SAIC Student Bethany Childs And Playing An Interfaced Conch Shell
  http://www.gearwire.com/conchshell-instrument-construction-002.html

• Stuart Schmidt Is More Machine Than Man, Now
  http://www.gearwire.com/glove-controller-instrument-construction.html
• Cycling 74 Max: Kyle Evans’ Cigar Box Controller Controls Air Traffic Control
  http://www.gearwire.com/cigarbox-controller-instrument-construction.html

And as mentioned previously…

• Chris Burke’s Interactopus: One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Interactopus
  http://www.gearwire.com/interactopus-instrument-construction.html
• Jenna Caravello’s Celloharp Promotes Inter-Instrumental Hybridization
  [link removed at the student’s request - so sorry!]

One highlight from 2007’s Instrument Construction class remains the “Bubble Organ” designed and built by Aaron Wendel.

Below is a short, unedited video clip of Aaron’s instrument.

(more…)

On Friday, May 2 SAIC’s Waveforms presented videos and performances by students from the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Gretchen Hasse from Gearwire came and interviewed many of the students in my Instrument Construction course, who opened the evening with an ensemble performance on their new instruments.

The video interviews are being completed now, and the first one up in the series is with Jenna Caravello, who worked all semester on her original acoustic instrument, the Celloharp. As you might guess from its name, this is a hybrid instrument. Jenna’s persistence and resilience in the face of so many kinds of challenges during its design and construction earns my respect and admiration.

The second video is an interview with Chris Burke who took Shawn Decker’s Programming For Sound course this spring. Chris dug deep into Max/MSP and Jitter software, and Ed Bennett’s ArtBus card, to come up with the Interactopus, a hardware interface for the real-time control of sound and video housed inside a warm, flexible fabric body.

Please visit this web page again and soon, as I announce more of Gretchen’s interviews with some of my outstanding student artists and their wonderful instruments.

SAIC’s Waveforms presents sound works and performances by students from the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, on Friday, May 2 at the Fine Arts Building (Curtis Hall)
7:00-10:00pm, 410 S. Michigan Avenue 10th floor, Curtis Hall, FREE ADMISSION

Students in my Instrument Construction course will open, performing as an ensemble of invented and hybrid electronic and acoustic instruments, during Looptopia.
Here are some photos of the instruments that the students will be performing on:

My article “The Springboard: The Joy of Piezo Disk Pickups for Amplified Coil Springs” is available now, published in Leonardo Music Journal, Volume 17, by the MIT Press. This year’s issue offers a wealth of articles by Bert Bongers, David Toop, and Peter Blasser, with artists’ statements by Richard Lerman, Brett Ian Balogh, César Dávila-Irizarry, Vic Rawlings, James Fei, Neil Feather, Robert Poss, Kyle Lapidus and Tali Hinkis, hans w. koch, Laura Emelianoff, among many more. Due to the overhwelming response to the call-for-articles an online suplement has been added to accommodate submissions that could not fit within the print version (90 pages) of the journal. For more info, see the Table of Contents: http://www.leonardo.info/isast/journal/toclmj17.html

The journal’s companion CD compilation, “The Art of the Gremlin: Inventive Musicians, Curious Devices” curated by Sarah Washington, features 17 tracks by over 18 electronic artists and instrument inventors. Among them are Norbert Möslang, Haco, Leonardo Di Crappio, Rhodri Davies, Knut Aufermann and Tetsuo Kogawa, and Toshimaru Nakamura.

The Bubble Organ

Aaron Wendel, one of my instrument construction students at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has a video up about his very cool and unusual Bubble Organ. Watch it on the Gearwire website: http://www.gearwire.com/bubble-organ-lab.html

The Springboard

For a demonstration of my own instrument invention, the Springboard, watch the four videos on Gearwire:

• Part One (introduction)
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four

An in-depth text description of the Springboard will be published this year in the Leonardo Music Journal, and another version can be found here on the “experimental instruments” page.