Re: bicycle as a folk instrument

> 6. Re: bicycle music
> From: "Daniel Wolf" <djwolf@snafu.de>

>Just to make this thread more complete, it should be notes that Richard
>Lerman's "travelon gamelan" made use of bicycles and parts thereof in an
>alternatively tuned environment; at least one work of P.D.Q. Bach (Peter
>Schickele) featured a prominent role for bicycle (especially blown
>handlebars); and Gordon Mumma's interview in his episode of Robert Ashley's
>"video opera" _Music with Roots in the Aether_ contains a bit of theoretical
>discourse on the subject of the bicycle as folk instrument.
>
>Daniel Wolf

You might like to add to that list "A concert on bicycles" a program I
first did in Canberra (Australia's national capital) in 1983. The program
involved an audience attending an outdoor concert riding bicycles around
the foreshore of Lake Burley Griffin with ghetto-blaster radio receivers
strapped to the bicycle frame, and riding en masse with the radios tuned to
a pre-taped program consisting of electro-acoustic music. And though the
sound was broadcast in mono, variations in phase and pitch caused by
doppler shifts and the other bi-products of the moving participants at
times produced some surprising microtonal chorusing and pseudo-stereo
effects. And in the warm part of the day in early spring, the concert
experience sure beat sitting in a concert hall gawking at loudpeakers. The
event was more like a picnic than a concert and more fun than most. If a
bicycle is a folk instrument then so too is a ghetto blaster. If anyone's
interested this event was documented in LMJ No 4. pp. 17-22. The article
was titled "Interactive Radio".

Greg S