We who do what we do with sound and music get called lots of things and possibly the kindest is "experimental" It's not that "experimental" is necessarily an insult; quite the opposite: in popular usage it denotes exploration, an action without predictable results, an ascent into the unknown for the purpose of discovery or illumination. But its usage in labeling music is often pejorative and meant to marginalize the work and explain why most people consider it unpleasant to listen to.
When considering the experimental, it might be useful to delve into the word "experimental" itself. We may start with the prefix "ex" denoting "from", "out of", "away". We decapitate our "experiment" and are left with "periment". A touch of mispronunciation or misspelling will yield "pediment", a triangular gable having a decorative function in architecture, often crowning a door or window. It's a welcome metaphor for an ornamental fixture, also often found in orchestral music or opera and well defined as an overture or prelude, support for the opening or revelation of the material that follows.
But what is a "periment"? Digging into the depths of the internet leads to the Latin word "perimo", a verb with various meanings including "to annihilate, extinguish, destroy, hinder, prevent, kill, slay". If one is performing "ex perimo", is it leaving the scene of the crime? Constructive and generative? An act of promotion? Musicians love to compliment an exciting and superlative set with such adjectives as "killing". A successful Las Vegas or Borscht Belt comedian "slays" the audience. Is experimenting then, a renunciation of violence and specifically murder? By departing from the known elements of which music is created, are we making sounds that somehow heal, cure, making beneficial? Or not...Instead of this positive framing, might the experimental be that which is without use or function when the act of destruction is actually the generative force? Experimental: residue, perimo fallout, dry ashes, toxic waste, the reduction of action and reaction.
Experimentation is vital for the evolution of both concepts and their manifestation but I do believe that it's best performed in isolation without interference from friends or colleagues or other external distractions such as an audience. Sequestered in my studio, a great thrill is to plug an instrument into various devices patched together in a previously untried sequence just to see what happens. Alternately, a rush may come from mapping data from a source found in nature to a collection of pitches in a score and see where it takes me. The results may be wondrous or nothing at all but at least they're only awaiting my own evaluation. The deep beauty of experimentation is that with shifting parameters, it's unpredictable. Any positive results may then be incorporated into a composition or a performance setup while neutral or negative results may send you back to the drawing board. The passage of time may actually recontextualize those negative results and prove them useful after all.
It's exceedingly rare that I'll present a true experiment in concert - the experimentation has been done in the lab and the positive results then brought out to the public. However, there have been circumstances where one must launch oneself into outer space without knowing if you'll go into orbit or just fizzle out. One such situation was the premiere of my algorithmic composition SyndaKit in 1998. Based on the mechanisms of bird flocking, African drum choirs, RNA replication, and cellular automata, in theory all of the components as realized by the performers should interact to create an ever-shifting matrix of groove and texture. But when twelve musicians are required and rehearsal space and time both scarce and expensive, the most efficient way to initiate the experiment is to book the gig and then see what happens. Orchestra Carbon at that time was a free-floating pool of musicians who had, in various combinations, all performed algorithmic pieces that I'd composed for the group. For this concert there would be two sets at 8 and 10pm at Tonic, a venue, long gone, located in NYC's Lower East Side. We assembled at 5pm and after a quick build-up and sound check, began to go through the various elements of the piece. There was time enough for only an overview and a cursory run-through of one iteration. By its very nature, every realization of the piece is unique and any rehearsal just presents one set of the myriad permutations. All I can ask of the players is that they learn the basic rules and then apply their considerable creative skills in active listening and improvisation to make it all work. There's no right or wrong - only the act. At the downbeat of that first manifestation of SyndaKit, the lure of the unknown combined with the adrenalin of performance led to a successful experiment playing out over two sets, meaning that the music gave a glimpse into the continuous and greater flux that we all attempt to access.
Since my teenage years I've pursued instrument invention and construction, an activity steeped in experimentation and inspired by Harry Partch, country blues artists, and various non-Western musics. My luthiery skills are basic as are the refinement and extent of my tools. My workshop is stocked with the basics: saws and files, hand drill, pliers and diagonal cutters, screwdrivers and wrenches of various sizes, clamps. The exception is a small collection of wonderfully sharp woodcarving chisels inherited from my father. The final outcome is often rustic and unpredictable but this rough and unsophisticated process is valuable in that it yields unique instruments. The spirit of bricolage haunts the procedure: a balance of science and "magic". A pile of junk hints at a viable assemblage; a glimpse of an illusion of sound evolves into the sound itself snd its extrapolation. These instruments are quirky and demand unorthodox techniques to generate results. They flourish in the studio: a controlled environment immune to the demands of performance where a specific technique must be applied at the exact right time so that the sound may emerge when desired, no earlier or later. If it doesn't work the first time, you can always try another take.
Certain situations demand that the experimental be dragged kicking and screaming to the stage, a risk that teeters on the line between calculated and reckless. When this need rears its head, my go-to approach is to bring out one of the invented instruments. In the 1980s, my bands Carbon and Orchestra Carbon made use of the pantars and slabs, percussive string instruments built between 1980 and 1986 as well as the violinoid, built in 1978. For these concerts, the players familiarized themselves with the techniques and possibilities of the instruments and did the necessary homework to play them as intended in the music.
For his concert at Roulette on Nov. 3, 2022, multi-instrumentalist and composer Scott Robinson invited me to join him to play his suite Hypocycloid and requested that I bring the violameriyah to play on one of the sections. True to form, the violameriyah was constructed during the summer of 2021 from odd pieces of detritus residing in the multiple studio junk boxes. The chosen parts included a viola neck, mandolin fingerboard, import P-bass pickups, a piezo element, tuning pegs, springs, and a chunk of scrap wood. The name is a composite of viola, dulcimer, and sumsumiyah (a Bedouin zither). One pickup for each of the two necks plus the piezo, each on separate outputs allows for a plethora of sounds especially when combined with the specialized bowing and tapping techniques developed for this instrument plus the electronic processors. I'd recorded with it to create part of a sample pack for Splice.org
https://splice.com/sounds/packs/splice-explores/invented-instruments/samples
but hauling it onstage is different: there are no second takes or edits. This makes for a heightened state of being: hyperalertness to the quirks of the instrument and how to work with these potential obstacles, not against them. Fortunately, the Void was in alignment for those moments when the violameriyah was in action and it sounded wonderful and unique, especially when plugged into my Eventide Pitch Factor for some special sauce.
For a Nov. 11 show at Downtown Music Gallery I decided against taking the mostly-known route (as all improvisation involves some degree of deviance) and instead performing my solo set on a different instrument as-yet untested in the field. Chosen was the tre-ponti, named for its three bridges. An "unplayable" 1980s headless Arbor Stiletto guitar was also gifted to me during the summer of 2021. I first set out to make it playable and did succeed but this guitar still was meant for neither hands nor ears. The decision was made to transform it instead into an electro-acoustic sound source. The frets above the 14th fret were pulled and the fingerboard filled in with wood putty stained to match the rosewood. A new bridge made from electrical conduit was mounted between the pickups and a "gliss plate" with a piezo element set inside a 'pleather' sandwich was constructed and mounted behind the original bridge pickup. Two additional bridges (for three in total) were cut from aluminum tubing and mounted fore and aft of the gliss plate. The mono output was replaced with a two-circuit jack with the magnetic pickup routed to the tip connector while the piezo element was connected to the ring. To cap it off, a metal spring was mounted to the gliss plate to add some percussive boing. While I had tested the tre-ponti briefly when first completed, it had lain dormant, hanging on the wall in the studio waiting for a gig. I wanted to bring a spirit approaching pure experimentalism to this aspect of the event and so refrained from any further exploration. Arriving at DMG, the split output of the tre-ponti was connected to a guitar amp for the magnetic pickup and a bass amp for the piezo allowing me to dial in a fairly balanced tone across a wide panorama. Just a few minutes later it was time to dig in and I found myself quickly pulled into the tre-ponti soundworld with its unpredictable resonances, clouds of overtones, and varied clanks, thunks, howls, and sproings. Use of the EBow yielded nearly operatic singing tones with bizarre ghosting effects... an experiment well worth pursuing with the presence of audience ears and expectations adding to the overall presence.
Following my solo set was the duo of guitarists Bob Musso and Mark Daterman. An old friend, it was great to meet up with Bob after quite a few years. He and Mark invited me to join them for the first part of their performance. Playing the tre-ponti is daunting enough but to combine it with with two more conventional electric guitars adds another element of both conceptual and technical challenge. Nothing to do but jump in and find where the unpitched noise, non-tempered intonation, and somewhat random sonic manifestations of the tre-ponti intersected with the electric guitars. Fortunately, points were found and exploited after which Bob and Mark continued with a fluid and searching dialog.
Excellent! Then there is the Latin, extempore…
Great read Elliot 👍🏼 Interestingly enough I just had a luthier (Kelvyn Daly make a small bowable double neck, the Octacello … a “tenor uke?” neck and a 1/8 scale cello/viola … Magnetics and Piezo‘s etc. arriving soon after waiting over a year!