Using contact microphones, electromagnetic pickups, and tactile transducers, attendees will learn techniques for combining these elements with various materials to make their own custom musical instruments. You will leave the workshop with a kit of electronic components that will allow you to continue combining these elements to explore the acoustic properties of the materials around you and build your own unique electro-acoustic voices. The workshop will be presented as a lecture/demonstration followed by a hands-on play session and group improvisation.

Level:
Introductory. Open to guests of all ages and skill levels.

Required materials:
Participants are welcome to bring a material they find interesting; a broken cymbal, a piece of wood, or a signal generator; a small synth or laptop, to play sounds through different materials. Various musical toys, materials, and circuitry will be provided for experimentation.

About the Instructor
Thadeus Frazier-Reed is a composer, instrument designer, and creative technologist exploring the effects of movement, dynamic and stochastic processes, error, and instrument form on sound creation. He is interested in the ways in which the time, place, and audience change the context and content of a composition and uses these variables to explore emergent behavior of complex systems with simple rules. He views each new instrument design as an opportunity to discover the unique voice of that instrument.