Gran Cassa and the adaptive instrument Feed-drum
MICHELANGELO LUPONE
Centro Ricerche Musicali
Via Lamarmora, 18 - 00185 Roma
tel 06 4464161 fax 06 4467911
michelangelo.lupone@usa.net
e-mail: info@crm-music.it
ABSTRACT
The
abstract presents my piece Gran Cassa (1999 ñ 2003) in the version for
Feed-drum, a large electroacoustic percussion instrument that I conceived for
my piece Feedback (2002).
Music
and its primary element, sound, derive from the condition of excitation and
resonance of bodies set in vibration. Traditional instruments, and any other
element whose matter is capable of oscillation, produce under certain
conditions vibrations which can be perceived both by the ear or by touch. The
study of oscillatory phenomena and of the characteristics with which matter
vibrate and radiate energy is today the object of my expressive, linguistic and
scientific research (PlanofoniÆ), as in the case of my recent works of performative
art where, in addition to musical instruments, the sounds are produced by
objects, bodies and human action.
Sound, produced by the action
of the musician by percussion, pressure or friction, selects on the surface of
the membrane, one or more nodes (like a string instrument) which produces one
or more pitches and timbres.
Differently from a string,
which might be considered mono-dimensional, the membrane varies its vibrational
modes in two dimensions, this means the use of a new technique of performing
the instrument because the generated frequencies are not harmonics but follows
a non linear behaviour.
An important feature of the
Feed-drum is that the tones generated by the instrument can be varied in
amplitude and also hold indefinitely by the musician, exceeding the limit of
the short time duration of the sounds of all percussion instruments.
In my work Gran Cassa (first version 1999), I first experimented the
membrane behaviour and it was the preliminary study for the development of the
Feed-drum.
This instrument, for its intrinsic capacity of
transforming the sound, responds to both the velocity and direction of the
performersí gestures. Each type of sound is correlated to the type of gesture
that produces it, to the distance travelled by the hand of the performer and to
the speed with which the hand moves across the different areas of the membrane.
Michelangelo Lupone ñ Gran Cassa score