unsound

A concert performance piece 15-20 minutes in length comprised of percussion instruments, eurorack amplifiers and filters, and surface transducers. The piece was commissioned by Julie Licata with partial funding provided by a Research/Creative Activity and Professional Development Grant from the State University of New York College at Oneonta. As a collaboration between her and Brett Masteller Warren the grant enabled them to conceive of, and record/release, a piece of music focused on a feedback network with live interaction. The network consists of custom made contact microphones that are used to interact with a wind gong and bass drum. The signals captured from the acoustic instruments are sent into a eurorack modular system. The signals are then routed to multiple filtering modules that output a voltage-controlled bandpass signal. One set of paths is sent to a mixer and the other sent to a ring modulator. The output of the ring modulator is also sent to the mixer. The main output of the mixer is split and sent to two contact speakers that are connected to the wind gong and the bass drum head. The signals that are being sent to the percussion instruments are also fed to a combination of guitar and bass amplifiers as well as being reinforced with a standard sound system.