Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking
Nicolas Collins
Routledge, 2006
ISBN 0-415-97592-1
In these days of digital music production “laptop performers, GarageBand, audio programming environments (Max/ MSP, PD, supercollider) & iPod DJs” it’s very easy to forget the simple facts of electronic music. We forget the hidden ugly component parts of our pretty iMacs & Viaos, resistors, capacitors chips & electrical current, which enable us to run our software or download bit torrents were once the direct (analogue) source of sound.
Early electronic music (& the recording of music itself) was born of experimenting artists & engineers, patiently listening to the bleeps, swoops and crackles of electricity as it flowed through components loving soldered together by hand. The early pioneers of electronic music had to build their own instruments from scratch, finding new sounds as they went, inventing entirely new musical languages & forms, pulling new sounds from the ether.
In Nicolas Collins‘ book “Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking” we shake off the bounds of mass produced software, of expensive consumer electronics and re-enter the exploratory worlds of early electronic experimentalists such as David Tudor & Alvin Lucier, riding the pulsating waves of sonic history through to contemporary hardware hackers & instrument builders such as Xentos ‘Fray’ Bentos, Phil Archer, John Bowers & of course Nicolas Collins himself.
What an enlightening journey it is too. After a few weeks with the book & and a few pounds worth of electrical components you’ll feel like the next Leon Theremin or Robert Moog!
In Collins’ book we find (several) lifetimes of sound-making knowledge. Information gleaned through years of sonic-tinkering is shared freely (well for a small cover price) & explained simply (almost geek free) wrapping practical creative experimentation within insightful artistic contextualisation. Collins selflessly shares with us the intimate detail of producing sounds, upon which his own notable career as performer & composer of electronic music has been built.
Another major key to the successes of this book lie in Collins’ years of experience teaching students within an art school context. As Professor of Sound at the Arts Institute of Chicago & as a freewheeling travelling lecturer he has tried, tested and honed this book over the years. His practical experiments have been road tested by creative arts students the world over before hitting the printing press & this refining is instantly noticeable. With no knowledge of electronics & practically no knowledge of sound-making you’ll be producing your first sounds within moments of reading the first few (short) chapters. Collins’ emphasis is always upon the creative outcome, giving the reader the freedom & just the right knowledge to experiment under their own steam. It is refreshing and rare to find a practical manual for creative production so direct & engaging because of the instant results it enables & the space for individual creativity it encourages. Just once I’d like to see a software manual that encourages just one gram of the experimental sprit Collins’ book does.
However, despite its instantaneous results & simple friendly explanations this is no Dummy’s Guide. Collins never underestimates the reader, just because it is easy to understand it doesn’t make it lightweight. Alongside the practical instruction & space to explore personal projects, Collins frames & contextualises well, with thoughtfully picked examples of artists, composers & musicians who have explored or exploited similar techniques. The usefulness of this contextualisation is enhanced and extended by the inclusion of an audio CD featuring many of the artists discussed & techniques explained in the book. Of course, the CD deserves a separate review all of its own, so suffice to say it is an excellent stand-alone compilation of “handmade” music as well as performing a supporting role too.
Reading the book from cover to cover, Collins years of experience teaching this material is clear. His timing, like any good comedian (and he is very funny), is perfect. He knows just when to drop in the right nugget of information, at a level the reader will understand & enhancing where the reader may take those ideas next. The reader is led through the start of a project, then through practical or historical/ contemporary examples of other artists work and then the reader is led to experiment & modify their creations. He is also expert and leaving out the right information. Too technical! Forget it, you don’t need to know that to make good sound is Collins’ mantra.
The structure of the book is such that it will appeal both to novice & experienced hackers alike. One can read the book from cover to cover to pick up all the basic skills & techniques or dip into certain chapters to develop specific projects. Both a “tool box reference manual” and a primer in all things electronic music, Collins starts out with basic information; suggestions for tools and materials & how to dos (the soldering chapter is very good if you’ve never done it before) before exploring different facets of handmade sound making.
Early chapters develop the reader’s ear for hidden sounds exploring re-purposed electronic devices such as radios & toys or listening into hidden electronic or natural sounds using telephone taps, handmade contact mikes or simple condenser microphones. Microphones so cheap you’ll be boiling them alive just for your aural pleasure.
Later chapters explore analogue (almost) synthesis through the making of simple oscillator circuits and audio processing & manipulation including distortion, gating & tremolo. Two chapters expand into visual hacking including video cameras & LCDs. The final chapter explores the interface between handmade sensors & devices and the digital world.
The chapters develop in a modular manner, so that following through the book one can build circuits which will link to the next project and so on. For example, three chapters covering building simple oscillator circuits progress through synthesis techniques such as low frequency modulation of one circuit by another or modulating an external audio source (e.g. CD, guitar etc). By the end of the book you will have entire personal instruments built, wacky bastardised noise machines patched together something like an analogue synthesiser.
Links
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Music From Outer Space – Build Your Own Analogue Synthesisers
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