Wiardgroup

another tale from under the electronium hat...

i'm always disappointed that David Tudor is frequently overlooked in
all the modern chatter about electronic instruments. 
He was a concert pianist turned radio-shack junkie and most of his
gadgets are 'compositions-in-solder'. There is no question that from
an electronic engineering perspective his designs were technically
naive and primitive but there was nothing unsophisticated about the
music that  emerged from the output jacks....That, to me, is the
design ethic of an 'electronium'* in a nutshell.

There's some data here:
http://www.emf.org/tudor/Gallery/photos.html
but is only a bare smidgen ....way less than the impact of this quiet
giant deserves

Tudor's work has always served as a catalyst to clarify that which
distinguishes how i design a module for my sprawling modular pile from
my designs for an electronium. 

i always think about the module as a cog in the machine; a -component-
that must integrate into a very wide range of applications. Thus when
i think about a module i try to keep as many options open as possible.

In designing electroniums my conceptions are perhaps not quite -the
opposite- but definitely VERY different. I certainly don't worry about
closing down options. For instance, in one of my electroniums, one
oscillator ALWAYS warbles between two pitches, the player can affect
the interval, rate, and regularity of the warble but he cannot stop it
and make the Osc. rest at a steady pitch. (The other two Oscillators
don't warble but they are also prevented from playing a steady pitch too)
This is unequivocally a limitation that no designer of a commercial
instrument could afford to make but to my ear, this fairly draconian
restriction imparts much of the character of the instrument. 

In designing idiosyncratic gadgets like this, the finesse is always in
balancing the 'character' with the options. Too much 'character' and
the gadget turns into a one-trick pony fast.... Too many options and
it's 'just a synth'. It has to thwart the users intentions just enough
to push them out of their riffs and not so much that it plays them
rather than the other way around.

Before i started working in solder, i used to 'compose' a lot of
improvisation structures (John Zorn's COBRA is an outstanding example
of this genre). i found that all of the conceptual tricks and
techniques (many of which are VERY counterintuitive) that tended to 
goad, nudge, and tempt musicians into successful performances of those
pieces, could be translated to hardware terms as an interaction
between a creative musician and capricious and inconsistent, ensemble
of electronic automata** 

I view the successful performances as a sort of entertaining dance
performed by a slightly exasperated composer as she tries to herd a
flock of robot cats.

Another analogy that i find illustrative is an apocryphal story that
has been making the rounds in weirdo music circles for a long time....
It has been attributed to David Tudor but AFAIK there is no proof.
It's a good story nonetheless. 
As it goes ... There was a post concert 'cocktail confrontation' over
the accusation that a set of instructions and a few processing gadgets
that produced different results each time was not Composition.
Reportedly he conceded the semantic title of 'composer' and said he
saw himself more as an Abner Doubleday (the reputed inventor of baseball)
To wit: his job is to create a set of rules that partially restrict
the interactions of a group of independent entities. If he does his
job well and the rules govern but do not tyrannize the action the
results is something of nearly inexhaustible interest that remains
recognizable while never being the same twice.

That's a pretty good basic design spec for an electronium

Remember, Tudor was a pianist of formidable ability but he chose to
design circuits that disobeyed him in an effort to create better work
than his intentions would have allowed.

"I can't understand why people are afraid of new ideas, I'm afraid of
the old ones."
- John Cage

TGIF!
-doc

* i wonder how long it will take before i am not tempted to put the
word: electronium in quotation marks

**thus, in nuts and bolts terms, each functional block tends to
involve tightly coupled control and interdependent audio devices