Music is everywhere in Peter Blasser's house - just not where you'd
expect to find it.
Sure, there's the tuba upstairs, an instrument he's been playing since
he was a kid. And there are the various acoustic stringed instruments,
like the Moroccan-style lute, that he's been building since high
school. But there's also the wall-hanging in his basement, the shirt on
a hook outside his bedroom closet and the boxlike gadget tucked on a
shelf above his first-floor work space. These objects don't look
particularly melodic, but the sounds they make are attention-grabbers
of the first order, whirring and wheezing and woofing sounds unlike
anything your father's symphony - or rock band, for that matter - ever
produced.
"I really love the infinite tonalities you can get out of these
instruments," says Blasser, whose creations include some that can be
played by rubbing your fingers across wooden strips, others that can be
played simply by walking near them or waiting for a stiff breeze to
enter the room. "You realize in electronica that every tone is
possible, so you should be working with every tone."
Welcome to the far-flung, wide-open world of electronica: sounds and
melodies produced by circuit boards, transistors, oscillators and the
batteries that power them, attached to everything from banners to
shirts to seemingly stray pieces of wood. Blasser, 29, has been
playing, designing and manufacturing instruments like these for almost
a decade. He is one of about 20 electronics artists who will be
performing, demonstrating or conducting do-it-yourself workshops at
Electronica Fest 2009, taking place Saturday at the National
Electronics Museum in Linthicum.
Electronic music is nothing new - the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson was
using a theremin to add that wooo-ooooh sound to "Good Vibrations" in
1966, while the Who's Pete Townshend had a synthesizer whirling its way
through the chords of 1971's "Baba O'Reilly." But with today's
electronica, it's as though the Moogs and the theremins were put on
steroids.
"This is going to be a very modern, very cool day," says Gary Mauler,
an engineer for Northrop Grumman who volunteers at the museum and is
organizing Electronica Fest. For visitors, he promises a "total
immersion in electronics. ... It's very different from what people will
be used to."
Blasser is happily representative of that notion. Tall and
dirty-blond-haired, with slim fingers just perfect for alternately
brushing, stroking and prodding the instruments he designs, he delights
in creating sounds and experiences well outside the norm.
Sitting in his West Baltimore workshop, Blasser prepares to play his
tetrazzi organ, an instrument slightly larger than a DVD case and about
twice as thick. Oak strips are set across its top, functioning as a
sort of keyboard. On the side, knobs are used to adjust the pitch and
tone. Underneath it all is the Blasser-designed circuit board that
translates the pressure exerted by his fingers into sounds, which come
out of small speakers. The tetrazzi is connected by a thin wire to its
power source, a single 9-volt battery.
Stretching out his fingers, Blasser gently strokes the
pressure-sensitive wooden keys. By varying the pressure and the
direction of his strokes, he can make sounds travel from one speaker to
another, make them climb from a low howl to a guttural wail. Simply by
sliding his fingers, Blasser can stretch out tones beyond what seems
reasonable, to create sounds both profoundly otherworldly and utterly
engaging.
Down in his basement, another of Blasser's designs, which he calls a
deerhorn, hangs from the ceiling; with a smile, he refers to it as a
"polyphonic theremin." Its electronic circuitry, attached via wires to
pieces of fabric and circuit boards, doesn't need to be touched to
create sounds; in fact, it reacts to a wide range of environmental
factors, including temperature, wind, light, even the mere presence of
a human. Walk close to the deerhorn's multicolored tapestry, and the
sounds begin to swell, growing louder and fuller; back away, and it
grows quiet. Stand still for an extended period, though, and become
really entranced, as the quiet is intermittently broken up by eerie
moans and gentle sighs.
"There's something about not playing it," he says, sounding like
something of a proud father, looking forward to introducing his
brainchildren to an appreciative new audience on Saturday. "You hang it
on the wall, and it plays itself."