This weekend we played a show at the Bellingham Electronic Arts Festival (BEAF). A good time was had by all, we made some new friends, and heard some great, and not so great (you know who you are), new electronic music.
One of the concert venues at BEAF is the American Museum of Radio and […]

We’ve started a brand new collaboration / friendship with our neighbors, the Stupid Fun Club. The Club builds robots for fun and profit, and when you are at their studio it’s hard to know what kind of metallic friends you might make. (”Knifey”, however, did not want to play.)
Our best friend thus far is […]

For a long time I played only alternate controllers. I worked closely with Don Buchla on both Thunder and Lightning, contributing ideas, testing, and even wrote the manual on one. These were refined and knowable devices and they reflected, through our collaboration, much of what I personally wanted in a controller.
For a period of years these […]

Before technology, music was always interactive. Pitches would wander to make a point and rubato was as natural as pausing before the punch line.  Technology has altered how we play and listen. As a new  technology enters common use two things can happen. One- adopters work around the weaknesses and change what they are doing. […]

I really like notes. Hell I admit it, I like wrong notes. (I’m not at my 6 coffee limit yet and can feel this one coming on.)
When did music become management? When did we stop playing notes and start playing files? How did the guy that played the records become the artist?
I have some friends […]

It’s only been a little more than a century that we have been able to listen to music without watching while it was created. Visual input like dance has usually followed the beat of the music. Even when there is no visual focus we often stare at our speakers while the music plays.
Movies started without […]

In order to analyze why new instruments or alternate controllers have not yet happened we should start by discussing what makes a good instrument. What set of characteristics makes a violin, saxophone or a tabla beloved and accepted while another set creates a novelty instrument like a gazoo or instruments that never enter wide use […]

We at the BEAM Foundation felt that there was no real forum for the discussion of the issues related to interactive computer music performance. To remedy this, we present this blog to spur intelligent dialog about technology and its impact on the future of music. We will concentrate our discussion into four major […]