Evidently the Bay Area’s music scene is experimental in a number of ways. Clearly the BASED crowd is on some quality substances and the ravers know how to shut down a muthafuckin growhouse/ warehouse on a Saturday night, but they are not alone. Paul Dresher and a collective of Bay Area composers and inventors are pioneering the lonely frontier of instrument invention in a digital age. Chloe Veltman of the New York Times reports:
Don’t look for conventional signs of music making in the West Oakland workshop of Paul Dresher, a composer. The piano has been covered to protect it from dust. A broken drum set sits in a corner. But if you are interested in hearing a tune on the “Hurdy Grande,” a 10-foot-long wooden sound box and aluminum frame with a motor-driven wheel for bowing the instrument’s seven strings, you have come to the right place.
When Mr. Dresher — a composer whose output straddles commissions from the San Francisco Symphony and experimental works for musical theater and film — plucks or presses the contraption, he brings forth assorted sounds reminiscent of a sitar and a guitar played with a whammy bar.
Mr. Dresher is among a loose group of musicians based in the Bay Area who are working to create new musical devices. Building on the legacy that was started by 20th-century West Coast inventor-composers like Harry Partch and Lou Harrison, these musicians are paying special attention to the terrain between the world of computers and traditional acoustic musical instruments to expand musical frontiers.
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