Contact Mic Making - Piezo Workshop
Daniel Fishkin & Ed Baer
Thursday, Sep 16, 6:30 - 9:30pm
$60 (including materials cost)

Harvestworks
596 Broadway, #602 New York, NY 10012 212-431-1130
Subway: F/M/D/B Broadway/Lafayette, R Prince, 6 Bleeker

Piezo: derived from the Greek piezein, which means to squeeze or press.

Most microphones, the kind you sing into, pick up vibrations from the air molecules around us.  But sound can travel through any medium, and inside solid objects a whole world of sound is waiting to be heard.  Contact microphones are an inexpensive, incredibly sensitive tool to access and amplify this realm of sound.  In recent decades, these devices have been widely embraced by the noise music community, but in fact their musical history extends back to early electronic music, when John Cage, in his quest for new sounds, utilized the contact-mic slinky in 1959— truly a sound which sproinged the world.  The contact mic may be one of the first tools to liberate electronic music from the sterile (and, perhaps prohibitively expensive) university laboratory, and bring it to a level accessible by all.

Attendees will learn how to wire up their very own contact mic and discuss various methods of using it.  No previous soldering experience required!  In addition to theory and practice, we will also have the chance to discuss the history of piezoelectric materials, and share ideas on how to use these fascinating tools; perhaps you’d like to amplify your doorspring, record the sound of snow crunching under your boots, or listen to the mammoth subharmonies of cocktail stirrers and rubber bands.  This is an experiment-friendly course.  We will also discuss using piezos as speaker drivers, and as triggers for arduino systems and synthesizers.

Daniel Fishkin is a musician/soundmaker who is influenced by Goethe's Faust, and wood which is attached or unattached to the ground. He has taught workshops in electronic music and listening at SAIC, Bard College, and at The Kitchen in NYC, as well as the Bent & Megapolis Festivals.

Ed Bear is a musician and engineer working with found electronics, video, transmission and collective improvisation. As an educator and artist, he aims to technologically empower everyone as scientists and magicians and investigate the questionable calibration of human perception. He has toured extensively in North America and Europe as a former member of the group Talibam!; performing at major venues such as Issue Project Room, Free103Point9, Tonic, The Montreal Pop Festival, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Duke University. In 2009 he received the Roulette Intermedia Emerging Composer Commission, as a founding member of the duo TwistyCat, and NSF funds to study software defined radio.