Chambers: Scores by Alvin Lucier

6. Music for Solo Performer

MUSIC FOR SOLO PERFORMER This page intentionally left blank MUSIC FOR SOLO PERFORMER (1965) for enormously amplified brain waves and percussion. The alpha rhythm of the brain has a range of from 8 to 12 Hz, and, if amplified enormously and channeled through an appropriate transducer, can be made audible. It can be blocked by visual attention with the eyes open or mental activity with the eyes closed. No part of the motor system is involved in any way. Control of the alpha consists simply of alteration of thought content —for example, a shifting back and forth from a state of visual imagery to one of relaxedresting. Place an EEC scalp electrode on each hemisphere of the occaipital, frontal, or other appropriate region of the performer's head. Attach areference electrode to an ear, finger, or other location suitable for cutting down electrical noise. Route the signal through an appropriate amplifier and mixer to any number of amplifiers and loudspeakers directly coupled to percussion instruments, including large gongs, cymbals, tympani, metal ashcans, cardboard boxes, bass and snare drums (small loudspeakers face down on them), and to switches, sensitiveto alpha, which activate one or more tape recorders upon which are stored pre-recorded, sped-upalpha. Set free and block alpha in bursts and phrases of any length, the sounds of which, as they emanate from the loudspeakers,cause the percussion instruments to vibrate sympathetically. An assistant may channel the signal to any or all of the loudspeakers in any combination at any volume, and, from time to time, engage the switches to the tape recorders. Performances may be of any length. Experiment with electrodes on other parts of the head in an attempt to pick up other wavesof different frequenciesand to create stereoeffects. Use alpha to activate radios, television sets, lights, alarms, and other audio-visual devices. Design automated systems, with or without coded relays, with which the performer may perform the piece without the aid of an assistant. Edmond Dewan, TechnicalConsultant 69 / think we would both agree that the kernel of Music for Solo Performer is the performance of brain waves. // you accept that, I'd like to ask what sort of ideas you have about the piece as a whole. Well, the fact that it is a performance of live brain waves instead of a structured tape manipulation piece was a very crucial decision for me. It all happened when I wasteaching at Brandeis. I had made the acquaintance of Edmond Dewan, a very imaginative physicist who was on the faculty at Brandeis but who was then working for the Air Force doing experiments with brain waves. They thought that certain pilots who were prone to epilepsy were blacking out when the speed of the spinning propellors got to a crucial point; I could be wrong about this, but I think it was sixteen times per second. When the sunlight would shine through the spinning props, it would lock on to something visual in the brain of the pilot. They had asked Dewan to try to investigate that, so he was doing experiments with brain waves. And it's very funny because he had offered his equipment to one or two other members of the faculty at Brandeis, suggesting that they might be interested in making pieceswith brain waves, but no one took him up on that. This was 1965. I had been at Brandeis for just a couple of years, and I was at a point in my compositional life where I didn't have any good ideas. I was conducting the Chamber Chorus and I had done some electronic music in Italy when I wason a Fulbright there, but I hadn't really found anything that interested me; I certainly didn't feel like composing instrumental music. Dewan described to me this phenomenon that had to do with visualization, that by putting yourself in a non-visual state, it would be called a meditative state now, you could release the potential of the alpha that is in your 70 head. It's a very small amount, but it would become perceptible, at least to an amplifier. The idea of it just struck me very strongly, probably more for theatrical or visionary reasons than for sound or musical reasons, because I didn't know what it was going to sound like. Actually, it doesn...