You have an Opportunity

Ivor Darreg, composer and instrument designer, recently opened a new studio. There are few, if any, other places where you can try out so many new scales, with their unprecedented harmonic and melodic possibilities.

The musical vocabulary has remained static for some time, because of the limitations of conventional instruments. Lately, however, the lid is off and undreamt-of, literally unheard-of, sounds and combinations are possible.

Instead of merely dreaming about what might happen in the future, Ivor Darreg has collected, and built, and designed, and modified instruments to produce the actual SOUNDS. For once they can be heard by others, not just read about or conjectured.

This has not been a lone-wolf affair. Indeed there is quite a network of people in operation right now, spanning the country and including some persons and groups abroad. Here in San Diego, the Interval Foundation and Magazine have been promoting new instruments and scales and encouraging new kinds of composition.

When this many people come together, even though separated by vast geographical distances, and correspond and make so many long distance calls to one another, one has to concede that the time is ripe!

What permits this change to happen is recording. So many people now have cassette machines and there is readily-available equipment for overdubbing (re-recording, superposition) and copying cassettes is now affordable and feasible, so we no longer have to worry about sheet music getting published or the staggering problems of getting new music for conventional instrumnets rehearsed and performed in concerts.

The recording machine does not care what new scale or harmonic scheme goes through it.

In turn, this means that composers can have one-of-a-kind, very different instruments, since it is no longer necessary to mass-produce a new instrument to get the sound publicized. These instruments can be modifications, such as re-fretted guitars with more tones per octave, or designs practical for home construction, such as metal tubes and bars, or they can be electronic instruments built out of readily-available parts. Beyond that, one can write programs for small computers and this idea doesn't involve re-wiring electronic parts or any physical changes in the equipment, so otherwise impossible instruments can be heard and used.

Other composers and performers will be able to use these instruments from time to time; indeed, several of them are on loan already.

lvor Darreg now has a collection of reels and cassettes from other composers which probably has becbme one of the most extensive archives of non-twelve-tone music anywhere. It is hoped to get some of the tapes edited and copied and copies placed in as many "elsewheres" as practicable. This new movement is free to grow without disturbing the status quo Musical Establishment which latter can go on ignoring it as they please. No need to convert them against their will.

For information: Ivor Darreg, 3612 Polk Avenue, San Diego CA 92104

(619) 284-7075