Hyperconnected and Happily Panicking // crackle synth (2020-2024)
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In 2020 I started some research on electronic DIY instruments that behave in pseudochaotic ways and have experimental interfaces. I stumbled upon the Dutch composer Michel Waiszvisz and his „crackle boxes“ and the „crackle synth“. As the original schematics of the instrument are hard to find, I ended up building an approximation of the crackle synth that includes some personal additions leaving me unsure whether I should even call it „crackle synth“...
I really like the very musical behaviour of this touch-sensitive instrument and I am particularly fond of using it in improvised duo settings, in which the instrument itself contributes to the dramaturgy of the performance as a third entity.
In June 2024 I released an album documenting this process, entitled “Hyperconnected and Happily Panicking” via Wide Ear Records.
Editorial:
It’s May 2024, and "Hyperconnected and Happily Panicking" is finally coming to life after almost two years of conceptualizing, recording, listening, editing, and producing the record. It is a very personal project and part of a bigger ongoing journey that keeps raising many questions for me. I wanted to give the curious listener the possibility to access some of my thoughts and therefore decided to write this note that you are now holding in your hands.
"Hyperconnected and Happily Panicking" is something between a documentation project and a concept album. It is a collaborative body of work and a network of encounters and conversations. It marks a personal milestone in my research around Michel Waisvisz’ crackle synth that started sometime in 2021 with the building of an approximation of the original instrument. It is this first version that can be heard throughout the record.
The album and track titles can be read in different ways, and I don’t want to force a particular reading. They may or may not help you access the music. The record ended up containing nine very different and unique improvisations, each one being a duo with another artist. For me, they reflect different ways of approaching duo improvisation, the peculiarities of the crackle synth and its surprising similarities to other instruments. On a another level they also reflect the contemporary (global) interconnectedness of artists through niche music and zeitgeist in general.
Non-instruments & the crackle synth:
Over the past years, I have pursued my interest in musical instruments that usually aren’t perceived as such. Objects that were built for another purpose, but become instruments when being misused – like the no-input mixer (a mixing desk turned into a sound source by using feedback loops to make the internal circuit oscillate).
One thing that fascinates me about what I call "non-instruments" like the no-input mixer is that the performer doesn’t interact with the instrument via a traditional interface (e.g., a piano keyboard). Since those interfaces contain a lot of knowledge that is inscribed or coded into them (like tonality, tuning, concepts of virtuosity), it can be very liberating to use alternative ones.
This has been very meaningful for me coming from an academic jazz saxophone background but always searching for ways to leave the dogmatism of music academia behind. The no-input mixer served as an escape hatch for me, as it rendered the question of what is musically right or wrong obsolete simply by being "wrong" all the time. It is an object or tool that hasn’t been created to produce sound on its own but that can very well become an instrument if used in unorthodox ways. It becomes an anti-virtuous instrument without any canonized or institutionalized performance techniques and the expectations that come alongside.
While researching DIY electronic instruments around 2020, I stumbled upon the crackle synth and decided to attempt building a version. Since I couldn’t source the original schematics of the crackle synth, an instrument that has never been on the market, by the way, I decided to build my own alternate version, an approximation of the instrument including some personal features and twists. For the construction, I based myself on speculations of DIY hackers on how the original instrument could have been built. The result is an instrument that is definitely similar and "crackle" but also quite different from the original in a lovely way.
The crackle synth is a 1970s electronic DIY instrument first built by Dutch sound artist Michel Waisvisz. The instrument is basically an excerpt of a radio circuit that is being misused by circuit bending. The performer will temporarily create absurd connections and feedback loops between electric components using patch cables or their own body. The system is sensitive to touch, temperature, and humidity. The emitted sounds meander between fragile stability and unpredictable pseudo-chaotic behavior.
While playing a scale on a piano is easy, due to its interface being a keyboard giving you direct access to the tuned notes, it’ll be hard if not impossible on the crackle synth due to it being extremely sensitive to minor changes in the finger pressure, temperature, and moisture affecting the conductivity and capacitance of the human body interacting with the electronic circuit. The piano keyboard limits possible pitches to the ones we consider being relevant for musical purposes, there is no sound in between two keys, no liminal space where weird things would happen. The crackle synth’s interface is more complex. By touching pads, the performer creates arbitrary contacts between different parts of the circuit inside the instrument, which results in a wide and unpredictable range of possible sounds. And there exactly lies the beauty of the interface: it encourages the player to improvise, to practice curious listening, and to seek out (possibly new) sounds instead of reproducing known patterns and clichés.
Crackle conversations, duo improvisations, pseudo-chaos:
The working title for this project was "Crackle Conversations". I don’t love the use of metaphors borrowed from linguistics used to describe music or processes in it, but I still felt like many of the duo improvisations that took place in the making of this album could be understood as abstract dialogues of some kind. But who is talking to who? Who is listening? And how many parties are actually included?
Usually, when playing, I aim for a specific sound, but I won’t always reach it, due to the instrument’s uncontrollability. But I prefer to say that the instrument has its own agency or that it is an entity on its own. The crackle synth clearly feels like a haunted instrument to me, all kinds of mysterious things happen… I would still claim that the instrument can be tamed and mastered to some extent, mastery implying knowledge of its sonic capabilities while being ready for surprises or knowing how to look for them.
Since the crackle synth behaves in pseudo-chaotic ways and doesn’t really allow for the exact reproduction of sounds, it taught me to listen very carefully to what I am playing, embracing any sound coming out of it as an exciting event first of all and at the same time to rely on experience and intuition to alter the sound that the instrument is emitting. The dramaturgy of any improvised piece of music with the crackle synth emerges out of a constant feedback loop between the player listening to what the instrument is doing, then inducing physical change thus shaping the sound that is being heard. It is an approach of explorative play, curious listening, and reacting.
For this album, I ended up playing duo improvisations only. The beauty of the duo context is that both instruments can cut through if they want but can also blend together easily. As opposed to playing alone, having a duo partner who can react smoothly helps make musical sense of the crackle synth’s lurking unpredictability. The duo becomes a de facto trio with the crackle synth imposing the piece’s dramaturgy to some extent.
Some words on the duo partners and their instruments & the creative process behind this record:
What you hear on this record are excerpts of recordings of live sessions, sometimes concerts that I organized with all nine duo partners. They happened in many different places between Berlin and Switzerland. The final selection of the excerpts happened in dialogue with the respective duo partners. There was a ton of beautiful material ready to release with every duo. The final selection doesn’t necessarily consist of the most representative tracks of the playing of every duo but rather portrays a vast sonic diversity made possible by the incredible musicians with their unique ways of playing their instruments.
I was very happy to work together with old and new friends and acquaintances that I’ve met in Zürich and in Berlin over the years. Violeta García on cello, Mariana Carvalho using voice and objects inside a water-filled pot recorded with a hydrophone, Alex Riva on his plastic soprano recorder played inside a glass ball lamp, Mazen Kerbaj performing on an original crackle synth, using prepared speakers and other objects, Chris Pitsiokos on alto saxophone, Audrey Chen using voice and the ciat-lonbarde ‘fourses’ (another pseudo-chaotic DIY instrument), Beat Keller on the feedbacker electric guitar (a very special and custom made electric guitar with a feedback speaker inside the body), JD Zazie on CDJs and turntables, interacting with both digital and physical realms and finally Florian Kolb on the askomandoura, a traditional bagpipe made in Crete.
Without you, this album wouldn’t have been possible. Thank you Violeta, Mariana, Alex, Mazen, Chris, Audrey, Beat, Valeria, and Florian.
Thanks a lot also to everyone who supported or helped me in any way during the process. Special thanks go to Léa, Varoujan, Lua, Rabih, Ilia, Marta, Lara, Firuza, Vica, Gleb, Natálie, Xaver, David, Kristina, Nata… and finally also to Popkredit der Stadtzürich for the Auslandatelier-Stipendium in Berlin that actually gave me the time to work on this project and Wide Ear Records for their trust and for adding this record to their beautiful catalogue.
Aren’t we all hyperconnected and happily panicking at times?
(Pablo:) Who are you and what is your personal relationship to the crackle synth?
My name is Kristina Andersen, and I take care of the crackle synth and Michel’s other instruments on behalf of his daughter Rosa. The crackle synth is my favorite of the instruments; it is deep and simple, loud and mysterious. As an instrument, it is both new and old. Over the last 15 years, I have been working to document it and find new ways to ensure it gets played.
What is "crackle"? It somehow starts with radios but goes a lot beyond that…? How does it relate to malfunction?
Crackle is the area of electronic sounds that is not traditionally the aim of a circuit or especially controllable. It is the result of the in-between connection, the fuzzy connector, and the unusual resistor. It is what happens when you put your fingers among the components. It is not really a malfunction but rather a different way for something to function, a way to put yourself into the electronics and be part of the sound.
You can read some of Michel’s thoughts on crackle here: http://cracklemusic.org/CrackleBox.html
From our previous conversation, I understand that Michel was all about trying things out rather than "reading the manual." How does this affect an understanding of "wrongness"?
Michel never thought anything was wrong; he would say, “make something out of it.” He never worried about anything breaking, and he was always looking for the edges of how something works. He was an explorer and improviser, and while he was always planning things, he was happiest just playing around.
What role do skills and/or virtuosity play in the performance with chaotic instruments?
To me, virtuosity is not about skill itself but rather having enough skill to be able to let go and follow your intuition. The best example is maybe that moment when you were learning to ride a bike and you stopped thinking about the bike and started thinking about the places you wanted to go.
Having seen and heard this version of the crackle synth and understanding that it is actually quite fundamentally different from Michel’s original, what do you make of it? Upon seeing it you were saying: "you built a saxophone!"
I really liked your version. It is clearly of the crackle family, but it is also clearly yours. As a woodwind player, you are trained on instruments that have all their complexity on the inside, and your version of the crackle synth shows that. To me, it felt like a saxophone in the way you constructed it but maybe more importantly in the way you play it.
In what sense are instruments like woodwinds but also the no-input mixer actually more closely related to the crackle synth than we might think at first?
These are all instruments where the complexity and strangeness lie in the inner and only barely controllable workings of the instrument. So, the musician simply has to allow the music to happen. It unfolds alongside and entwined with the intentions, the audience, and the space, but the voice and intention of the instrument itself are clear.
Hope this helps!
Kristina
recorded in Berlin, Bern and Zürich between October 2022 and June 2023
mixed by Varoujan Chetirian | mastered and cut by Rashad Becker
cover artwork by Mazen Kerbaj | graphic design by Pablo Ulises Lienhard
live-set with Beat Keller in 2023:
https://youtu.be/S8BYSbpScJY?si=ZamLtVuvm3V7SIAj
Earlier duo with Alex Riva (sonification of a painting by Marta Masternak)
https://youtu.be/rHw8XzPiZ3k
foto credits: Pablo Lienhard
In 2020 I started some research on electronic DIY instruments that behave in pseudochaotic ways and have experimental interfaces. I stumbled upon the Dutch composer Michel Waiszvisz and his „crackle boxes“ and the „crackle synth“. As the original schematics of the instrument are hard to find, I ended up building an approximation of the crackle synth that includes some personal additions leaving me unsure whether I should even call it „crackle synth“...
I really like the very musical behaviour of this touch-sensitive instrument and I am particularly fond of using it in improvised duo settings, in which the instrument itself contributes to the dramaturgy of the performance as a third entity.
In June 2024 I released an album documenting this process, entitled “Hyperconnected and Happily Panicking” via Wide Ear Records.
Editorial:
It’s May 2024, and "Hyperconnected and Happily Panicking" is finally coming to life after almost two years of conceptualizing, recording, listening, editing, and producing the record. It is a very personal project and part of a bigger ongoing journey that keeps raising many questions for me. I wanted to give the curious listener the possibility to access some of my thoughts and therefore decided to write this note that you are now holding in your hands.
"Hyperconnected and Happily Panicking" is something between a documentation project and a concept album. It is a collaborative body of work and a network of encounters and conversations. It marks a personal milestone in my research around Michel Waisvisz’ crackle synth that started sometime in 2021 with the building of an approximation of the original instrument. It is this first version that can be heard throughout the record.
The album and track titles can be read in different ways, and I don’t want to force a particular reading. They may or may not help you access the music. The record ended up containing nine very different and unique improvisations, each one being a duo with another artist. For me, they reflect different ways of approaching duo improvisation, the peculiarities of the crackle synth and its surprising similarities to other instruments. On a another level they also reflect the contemporary (global) interconnectedness of artists through niche music and zeitgeist in general.
Non-instruments & the crackle synth:
Over the past years, I have pursued my interest in musical instruments that usually aren’t perceived as such. Objects that were built for another purpose, but become instruments when being misused – like the no-input mixer (a mixing desk turned into a sound source by using feedback loops to make the internal circuit oscillate).
One thing that fascinates me about what I call "non-instruments" like the no-input mixer is that the performer doesn’t interact with the instrument via a traditional interface (e.g., a piano keyboard). Since those interfaces contain a lot of knowledge that is inscribed or coded into them (like tonality, tuning, concepts of virtuosity), it can be very liberating to use alternative ones.
This has been very meaningful for me coming from an academic jazz saxophone background but always searching for ways to leave the dogmatism of music academia behind. The no-input mixer served as an escape hatch for me, as it rendered the question of what is musically right or wrong obsolete simply by being "wrong" all the time. It is an object or tool that hasn’t been created to produce sound on its own but that can very well become an instrument if used in unorthodox ways. It becomes an anti-virtuous instrument without any canonized or institutionalized performance techniques and the expectations that come alongside.
While researching DIY electronic instruments around 2020, I stumbled upon the crackle synth and decided to attempt building a version. Since I couldn’t source the original schematics of the crackle synth, an instrument that has never been on the market, by the way, I decided to build my own alternate version, an approximation of the instrument including some personal features and twists. For the construction, I based myself on speculations of DIY hackers on how the original instrument could have been built. The result is an instrument that is definitely similar and "crackle" but also quite different from the original in a lovely way.
The crackle synth is a 1970s electronic DIY instrument first built by Dutch sound artist Michel Waisvisz. The instrument is basically an excerpt of a radio circuit that is being misused by circuit bending. The performer will temporarily create absurd connections and feedback loops between electric components using patch cables or their own body. The system is sensitive to touch, temperature, and humidity. The emitted sounds meander between fragile stability and unpredictable pseudo-chaotic behavior.
While playing a scale on a piano is easy, due to its interface being a keyboard giving you direct access to the tuned notes, it’ll be hard if not impossible on the crackle synth due to it being extremely sensitive to minor changes in the finger pressure, temperature, and moisture affecting the conductivity and capacitance of the human body interacting with the electronic circuit. The piano keyboard limits possible pitches to the ones we consider being relevant for musical purposes, there is no sound in between two keys, no liminal space where weird things would happen. The crackle synth’s interface is more complex. By touching pads, the performer creates arbitrary contacts between different parts of the circuit inside the instrument, which results in a wide and unpredictable range of possible sounds. And there exactly lies the beauty of the interface: it encourages the player to improvise, to practice curious listening, and to seek out (possibly new) sounds instead of reproducing known patterns and clichés.
Crackle conversations, duo improvisations, pseudo-chaos:
The working title for this project was "Crackle Conversations". I don’t love the use of metaphors borrowed from linguistics used to describe music or processes in it, but I still felt like many of the duo improvisations that took place in the making of this album could be understood as abstract dialogues of some kind. But who is talking to who? Who is listening? And how many parties are actually included?
Usually, when playing, I aim for a specific sound, but I won’t always reach it, due to the instrument’s uncontrollability. But I prefer to say that the instrument has its own agency or that it is an entity on its own. The crackle synth clearly feels like a haunted instrument to me, all kinds of mysterious things happen… I would still claim that the instrument can be tamed and mastered to some extent, mastery implying knowledge of its sonic capabilities while being ready for surprises or knowing how to look for them.
Since the crackle synth behaves in pseudo-chaotic ways and doesn’t really allow for the exact reproduction of sounds, it taught me to listen very carefully to what I am playing, embracing any sound coming out of it as an exciting event first of all and at the same time to rely on experience and intuition to alter the sound that the instrument is emitting. The dramaturgy of any improvised piece of music with the crackle synth emerges out of a constant feedback loop between the player listening to what the instrument is doing, then inducing physical change thus shaping the sound that is being heard. It is an approach of explorative play, curious listening, and reacting.
For this album, I ended up playing duo improvisations only. The beauty of the duo context is that both instruments can cut through if they want but can also blend together easily. As opposed to playing alone, having a duo partner who can react smoothly helps make musical sense of the crackle synth’s lurking unpredictability. The duo becomes a de facto trio with the crackle synth imposing the piece’s dramaturgy to some extent.
Some words on the duo partners and their instruments & the creative process behind this record:
What you hear on this record are excerpts of recordings of live sessions, sometimes concerts that I organized with all nine duo partners. They happened in many different places between Berlin and Switzerland. The final selection of the excerpts happened in dialogue with the respective duo partners. There was a ton of beautiful material ready to release with every duo. The final selection doesn’t necessarily consist of the most representative tracks of the playing of every duo but rather portrays a vast sonic diversity made possible by the incredible musicians with their unique ways of playing their instruments.
I was very happy to work together with old and new friends and acquaintances that I’ve met in Zürich and in Berlin over the years. Violeta García on cello, Mariana Carvalho using voice and objects inside a water-filled pot recorded with a hydrophone, Alex Riva on his plastic soprano recorder played inside a glass ball lamp, Mazen Kerbaj performing on an original crackle synth, using prepared speakers and other objects, Chris Pitsiokos on alto saxophone, Audrey Chen using voice and the ciat-lonbarde ‘fourses’ (another pseudo-chaotic DIY instrument), Beat Keller on the feedbacker electric guitar (a very special and custom made electric guitar with a feedback speaker inside the body), JD Zazie on CDJs and turntables, interacting with both digital and physical realms and finally Florian Kolb on the askomandoura, a traditional bagpipe made in Crete.
Without you, this album wouldn’t have been possible. Thank you Violeta, Mariana, Alex, Mazen, Chris, Audrey, Beat, Valeria, and Florian.
Thanks a lot also to everyone who supported or helped me in any way during the process. Special thanks go to Léa, Varoujan, Lua, Rabih, Ilia, Marta, Lara, Firuza, Vica, Gleb, Natálie, Xaver, David, Kristina, Nata… and finally also to Popkredit der Stadtzürich for the Auslandatelier-Stipendium in Berlin that actually gave me the time to work on this project and Wide Ear Records for their trust and for adding this record to their beautiful catalogue.
Aren’t we all hyperconnected and happily panicking at times?
(Pablo:) Who are you and what is your personal relationship to the crackle synth?
My name is Kristina Andersen, and I take care of the crackle synth and Michel’s other instruments on behalf of his daughter Rosa. The crackle synth is my favorite of the instruments; it is deep and simple, loud and mysterious. As an instrument, it is both new and old. Over the last 15 years, I have been working to document it and find new ways to ensure it gets played.
What is "crackle"? It somehow starts with radios but goes a lot beyond that…? How does it relate to malfunction?
Crackle is the area of electronic sounds that is not traditionally the aim of a circuit or especially controllable. It is the result of the in-between connection, the fuzzy connector, and the unusual resistor. It is what happens when you put your fingers among the components. It is not really a malfunction but rather a different way for something to function, a way to put yourself into the electronics and be part of the sound.
You can read some of Michel’s thoughts on crackle here: http://cracklemusic.org/CrackleBox.html
From our previous conversation, I understand that Michel was all about trying things out rather than "reading the manual." How does this affect an understanding of "wrongness"?
Michel never thought anything was wrong; he would say, “make something out of it.” He never worried about anything breaking, and he was always looking for the edges of how something works. He was an explorer and improviser, and while he was always planning things, he was happiest just playing around.
What role do skills and/or virtuosity play in the performance with chaotic instruments?
To me, virtuosity is not about skill itself but rather having enough skill to be able to let go and follow your intuition. The best example is maybe that moment when you were learning to ride a bike and you stopped thinking about the bike and started thinking about the places you wanted to go.
Having seen and heard this version of the crackle synth and understanding that it is actually quite fundamentally different from Michel’s original, what do you make of it? Upon seeing it you were saying: "you built a saxophone!"
I really liked your version. It is clearly of the crackle family, but it is also clearly yours. As a woodwind player, you are trained on instruments that have all their complexity on the inside, and your version of the crackle synth shows that. To me, it felt like a saxophone in the way you constructed it but maybe more importantly in the way you play it.
In what sense are instruments like woodwinds but also the no-input mixer actually more closely related to the crackle synth than we might think at first?
These are all instruments where the complexity and strangeness lie in the inner and only barely controllable workings of the instrument. So, the musician simply has to allow the music to happen. It unfolds alongside and entwined with the intentions, the audience, and the space, but the voice and intention of the instrument itself are clear.
Hope this helps!
Kristina
recorded in Berlin, Bern and Zürich between October 2022 and June 2023
mixed by Varoujan Chetirian | mastered and cut by Rashad Becker
cover artwork by Mazen Kerbaj | graphic design by Pablo Ulises Lienhard
live-set with Beat Keller in 2023:
https://youtu.be/S8BYSbpScJY?si=ZamLtVuvm3V7SIAj
Earlier duo with Alex Riva (sonification of a painting by Marta Masternak)
https://youtu.be/rHw8XzPiZ3k
foto credits: Pablo Lienhard
