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Editorial: Re-wiring Electronic Music

A new community of ‘makers’ has emerged in electronic music. These makers are not content with using off-theshelf ‘instruments’, but seek to create their own devices and systems to generate sound. Initially this would seem to have transpired through the need to personalise and critique our relationship with ever increasing esoteric and corporate technologies. There is a focus on the handmade, a DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos, working directly with materials and craft, raw analogue and hybrid electronics, and found sound and noise. But the electronics are only part of a bigger picture. Doing it yourself requires knowledge, and inadvertently this has created forums to exchange and share ideas and information. It is more a case of DIT (doing-it-together). The Internet has provided a depository of ‘how-tos’, whilst the workshop has physically brought like-minded people together from a range of disciplines to foster a new artistic practice. The boundaries between instrument making, composing and performing have become increasingly blurred to reveal an overriding process and participatory approach that is as much about sociopolitical concerns as electronic music. The bringing together of practitioners into a realm of shared experiences has highlighted the importance of collective music making and has encouraged the rise of the large electronic music ensemble. This in-the-momentness has also placed an emphasis on the live as opposed to the recording. By starting from the ground up, in the very essence of how a sound is made, there is also a predisposition towards exploration and invention resulting in a truly experimental practice. Running parallel with the ephemerality of the live performance, shared experiences and sound making are the physical things that are left behind: sound artefacts, instruments, circuits and assemblages where sound and the plastic arts meet. These devices then take the form of musical scores or documents of the artistic process, or works of art in their own right. The issue begins with an article by Andrea Valle who discusses his Rumentarium, a computer-based sound generating system involving physical objects as sound sources excited by DC motors. Valle’s system explores working with computer code and voltages as well as electroacoustic and electromechanical ways of generating sound. He is concerned with how composition and instrument design overlap to produce music. Valle also views how the system can be ‘played’ like an instrument through the addition of MIDI controllers or driven by algorithmic strategies. The idea of ‘softening’ hardware through the use of microcontrollers is also discussed. The works of Kanta Horio, Zimoun, and John Bowers and Phil Archer amongst others are cited as points of reference. Morten Riis’ Steam Machine Music provides a catalyst for the investigation of older technologies to provide new knowledge and understanding to rudimentary conditions regarding electronic music. These ideas are placed in context of the growing field of media archaeology. Riis’ work focuses on material physicality and the notion of operative technology as a basis for electronic music. He discusses in detail the construction of his steam-powered mechanical instrument that is built mostly from vintage Meccano parts and where the majority of sounds are created independently of electricity. Riis also considers the ‘machine’ itself as proving a document of the music. Sanne Krogh Groth continues the discussion on the work of Riis alongside the Danish composer/ artist Goodiepal. Groth argues that both composers, through their self-constructed instruments, challenge the broader conventions of computer music. She also suggests that theories from the field of media archaeology can be used to provide a greater understanding and insight into the area of DIY electronic music. Groth looks carefully at how Riis operates on a micro-level exploring the functions and dysfunctions of media, whilst Goodiepal’s macro-level approach deals in the realm of imaginary media. My own article in this issue puts forward the question: ‘With the first decade of the twenty-first century over and the DIY ethos firmly established to the point of becoming mainstream, what developments, if any, in this approach have occurred?’ The shift in emphasis from DIY to DIT (do-it-together) is discussed along with the musical consequences of collective instrument building, and large group and delegated performance. The concept of extended musical process through building sound devices and instruments is highlighted with some specific examples of my work. The article raises further questions regarding the definition of musical instrument and also presents the idea of physical artefact as musical document. The rise of the DIY expert and the boutique synthesiser are also discussed with particular reference to Martin Howse, Tristan Perich, Tatsuya Takahashi and the group FM3. Kazuhiro Jo, Adam Parkinson and Atau Tanaka present ‘workshopping’ as a collective creative musical practice. Central to their thesis is the notion of ‘Music