The Piezo-electric Guru!
Richard Lerman recieved an undergraduate degree in film studies from Brandeis College, where he also studied composition and ran the electronic music studio. There he began working with piezo-electric transducers, the basis of almost all his work, and had many opportunities to work with various electronic music pioneers like Gordon Mumma, David Tudor, David Behrman, and Alvin Lucier. He went on to teach in the Boston Museum School, working in the film department. Lerman concentrates on revealing the sonorous qualities of what are commonly regarded as silent or static objects.
Travelon Gamalon is an exemplary piece of sound art. It incorporates interactivity, visceral contact with sound sources, and it reveals the eerily beautiful internal sounds of bicycles. The general idea of the piece is to attach small microphones to the axles of bicycles, amplifying the sounds reverberating through the bike’s metal frame. Lerman has a detailed score describing how to produce Travelon Gamalon in concert and a “Promenade” version of the piece which calls for each bicycle to have a mounted speaker, producing the work by large groups of people riding the amplified bicycles en masse. One performance in Boston involved more than 30 participants.
The sounds produced are reminiscent of gamalon instruments, to the extent that they are both produced via the excitation of metal sound sources. There is a large variety of sounds possible from this “instrument”, from the rhythmic clicking of the gears to the sound of wind blowing against unprotected microphones. The effect is different according to the participants. Rhythms are generated which change as the rider changes her speed. As groups of riders pick up speed the discrete rhythmic components fuse into a large sound-mass which could be described as electronic cicadas at nightfall.
Due to its participatory nature it is difficult to evaluate the piece in strictly musical terms. It is not likely that Lerman intended formal structure to be of any importance in evaluating his composition because it is produced in the action of the performers. There is, however, an inherent arch structure that arises from the nature of bicycles, because they require some time to build up speed and time to slow down. Smaller structures arise from social dynamics; groups riding together, individuals darting about through the crowd, all this would be part of the audible performance. Lerman doesn’t “create” that, he allows it to happen. What he has created is a sound generating method with the tendency to create specific types of events. These events could be polyrhythmic structures, masses of filtered noise sounds, even melodies on what sounds like tuned percussion instruments. Most importantly, Lerman has made it difficult for anyone who has come into contact with his Travelon Gamalon to ever approach bicycles as merely transportation devices.
Another concert work Lerman has produced requires performers to play small metal plates of differing materials with propane torches. The changing states of the metals produce sounds which are then massively amplified. Changing States for 2 performers uses these metal plates and the contact microphones attached to them as instruments. The score notates actions to be performed on the metal plates as well as choreographed motions for the performers. The sounds generated are the clicks of the torches hitting the pieces of metal, the rush of flames hitting the metal and the pitch excited in the metal plates. Sometimes the plates vibrate against the torches producing a pitched rattle. The composition is in arch form. Beginning with the ignition of the torches, it increases in activity and pitched materials and slowly fades to silence as the torches are turned off and the metal plates are allowed to cool down. Changing States 2 and Changing States 3 use these instruments as accompaniment to improvising cellist and shakuhachi player, respectively.
In addition to more “traditional” composition, Lerman has produced a variety of installations. In one of these works, A Footnote from Chernobyl, he hangs tuning forks (each with a different pitch) by piano wire, allowing the forks to be moved by wind currents. The tuning forks are placed near objects, in one case they were surrounded by rocks, in another they were attached to a metal stand and dangled near the base of the stand.If there are any air currents in the room, the forks occasionally strike each other and any objects nearby them. In one installation he added small motors which vibrated the tuning forks between the stones which produced rattling sounds similar to a geiger counter. By placing transducers on each string, the sound of the tuning forks being struck is transmitted through the piano wire to the transducers. When they are not rattled by a small motor, the tuning forks resonating in the piano strings produce crystalline sounds with long, sinusoidal decays.
Lerman’s work depends upon his virtuosity with the piezo-electric transducer. He has developed a large body of work in which the internal sounds of environments are presented audibly. His Audio Transducer Series is a CD of recordings made in Newfoundland, South America, and various places in the Pacific. His recordings include spruce trees, cacti, waterfalls from underneath the water, thatch roofs and a bamboo bridge. He has also generated many different sounds by recording normal environmental sounds using various pieces of metal and glass as microphones.
The bulk of his work is recorded onto tape as electro-acoustic music, and his musical sense as a composer comes through in all the recordings. His visual and installation work affects his compositional relationship to time, however. The pieces tend to be slow processes which reveal the musicality of found objects. An essential element of all his work is the acknowledgment of the musicality discovered in the sources. In his own words: “I would like [the audience] to get in tune with this way of thinking about materials, with this way of hearing and seeing together. I think that’s important, to not take things for granted. To think, ‘yes, this is a soda straw, but listen to what it can do!’
