Sonic cultures of making: DIY sound and electronics since 1981

ABSTRACT

This paper explores do-it-yourself (DIY) and maker practices within sound and electronics through a close reading of Electronics and music maker magazine, first published in the UK in 1981 by electronic component supplier Maplin electronics. Comparisons are made between these sonic cultures of making of the early 1980s and more contemporary activity and commentary within the field. Themes used to make these comparisons are community, activism, learning and teaching, and experimentalism. Differences and similarities between sonic DIY practices defined as orthodox and experimental are considered; questions relating to what constitutes sonic DIY practice in a changing sociotechnical landscape are raised; shifting community identities and tensions within sound technology interest groups are discussed; and motivations and methods for the support of learning sound electronics are compared. The paper makes a novel contribution to contextual histories and theories of DIY sound and technology practices, which typically cite radio hams of the early twentieth century and experimental music of the 1960s/70s as precursors to current activities. It brings a breadth of scholarship from the wider field of maker culture to bear on sound-specific DIY practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Sound technology
• sound electronics
• experimental music
• sound art
• DIY culture
• maker culture
• circuit bending

Introduction

Sound can act as an invitation and motivation for humans to make objects and technologies. This has been the case since animal skins were first stretched over hollow logs, and continues through the design of the latest digital audio devices. For some people working creatively with sound and music, the making, tinkering and modification of sound technologies is a key part of the process. Such sonic, do-it-yourself (DIY) approaches have their own history dispersed across different contexts. Even narrowing the field to that of electronic sound reveals a wide range of examples including the radio hams and hacks of the early twentieth century (see Douglas 1993; Haring 2003), experimental music composers including Conlon Nancarrow, Percy Grainger, Raymond Scott, David Tudor and Gordon Muma, and commercial and industrial efforts such as from Thaddeus Cahill, Laurens Hammond, Leon Theremin and Robert Moog (see Behrman 2006; Collins 2007).

This tradition of a creative hands-on approach to the technologies of sound making was supported at the turn of the twenty-first century by a successful book titled Handmade electronic music (Collins 2006), first published in 2006 by Nicolas Collins who had studied under some of the key figures in the US electronic and experimental music scene of the 1960s and 1970s. The publication was originally a compilation of notes that Collins had used to run courses at The School of the art institute of Chicago, giving readers with no prior experience, the confidence to begin to explore electronic sound making devices in a hands-on way, gently ushering in more technical detail as the book progressed.

Around the same time that Collins’ book was first published a more general idea of a “maker culture” — not necessarily aligned to sound and music- was emerging from a number of sources. These included Massachusetts institute of technology (MIT) where Neil Gershenfeld’s How to build almost anything classes led to the global Fab-Lab network of technologically enhanced making facilities (Anderson 2012, 46; Gershenfeld 2012) which began to appear alongside other non-MIT affiliated makerspaces and hackspaces. MAKE magazine, founded in 2005 by Dale Dougherty (Dougherty 2012, 11) is also often cited as a key moment in the formulation of contemporary maker culture. This publication was quickly extended into highly successful Maker Faire events attracting thousands of visitors internationally. Technological developments contributed heavily to a growth in maker culture at this time, with the emergence of affordable 3D printing and other computer-controlled fabrication processes, and the arrival of the Arduino open-source programmable microcontroller in 2005. All of this was supported by knowledge sharing possibilities of the internet and greater opportunities for user generated web content heralded as “web 2.0.” The second edition of Collin’s Handmade electronic music, published in 2009, included specific reference to this this wider, contemporary maker culture, acknowledging that “the material world is now making a comeback” (Collins 2009, 296).

Since this time, a number of academic communities have drawn on and contributed to the idea of a contemporary maker or DIY culture. These include design studies, computing and human interaction (CHI), education, media and cultural studies, and science and technology studies, all of which are referenced in the pages that follow. This paper contributes to understandings of sound-oriented maker and DIY culture through investigation of a magazine titled Electronics and music maker (herein EMM) which was first published in the UK by electronics component supplier Maplin electronics in 1981, remaining in existence until 1986. Issues of the magazine are viewable via web archives such as Mu:zines (Mu:zines) and World radio history (World Radio History). EMM is particular as it sought to cater to both sound electronics enthusiasts and musician users of sound technology. The appearance of the word “maker” in the magazine’s title, pre dating any contemporary claims or references to a “maker culture,” applies both to music and technology at a time when these categories were less conflated than they are today.

This paper provides a novel perspective on the sonic cultures of making as it covers an era and an approach that is not well represented in contemporary literature, which tends to emphasize early twentieth-century amateur radio, and experimental music practices of the 60s and 70s when providing an historical context for current activities (e.g. Buechley and Perner-Wilson 2012; Haring 2003; Hertz and Parikka 2012; Kuznetsov and Paulos 2010, 295; Morreale et al. 2017, 6949; Pinch 2016). By surveying the early 1980s world of EMM new perspectives on a lineage of sonic making emerge. These include changing attitudes to experimentalism and activism within DIY communities, enduring support for learning within a changing media and technology landscape, and different positions on what technical practices actually constitute DIY sound making.

The investigation is also significant in providing general insight to a particular socio-technological time when many music technologies were at a turning point of becoming more affordable and accessible, more digital and integrated, and the marketplace more global. It appears that this time in the early 1980s marked a point of departure from the technologically tangible “material world” that Collins – in the second edition of his book- subsequently claimed was making a comeback in 2009.

Methods and approach

The historical examples of EMM magazine are analysed using a similar method to Sivek (2011, 192) whose textural analysis of MAKE magazines from 2008 and 2009 involved close readings of editorial content and portions of making projects. Following Fursich (2009), Sivek considers this the “sociological approach to textural analysis” with the potential to identify “specific ideologies and audience position implicit in the text by reading it closely and connecting it to both cultural forces and its conditions of production and reception” (Sivek 2011, 192). The analysis of EMM used here extends this approach to include a close reading of readers’ letters as well as editorial and project content. It also includes engagement with the technical detail of DIY projects where these allow for insight into sonic cultures of making.

The themes emerging from these readings of EMM have been mapped to themes identified in the review of contemporary literature from the broad range of disciplines on maker culture identified above. These overlapping thematic areas used to structure the main body of the paper are community, activism, learning and experimentalism.

Community

Current literature emphasizes how community is a key concern for maker and DIY groups. It is through community that individuals receive practical support, share expertize and ideas, offer peer critique and gain access to tools and resources. Such is the importance of this kind of support that the notion of DIY has occasionally been reimagined as DIT (doing it together) (see Fauchart et al. 2022; Kori and Novak 2020; Mann 2014). Physical environments such as Fab Labs and Makerspaces form a key element of makers “doing it together,” often also acting as co-work spaces, clubhouses, innovation spaces and schools among other things that can be defined as “third spaces” – social spaces separate from the home and workplace (Taylor, Hurley, and Connolly 2016, 1423).

These physical spaces exist alongside vibrant online making communities which grew rapidly with the emergence of web services that easily allowed for user generated content in the early 2000s. Kuznetsov and Paulos (2010) explore six online Maker communities, looking at questions relating to the frequency and type of contribution that individuals might make (post a question, upload an image etc.) and their motivations for contributing (getting inspiration, receiving feedback, showcasing ideas etc.). The study also explores how participants categorized their projects e.g. knitting, art, electronics, music, audio etc.

This categorization of types of making can lead to divisions within maker communities. As Halverson and Sheridan (2014) explore, the MAKE organization has been criticized for foregrounding a narrow and highly technical, robotics, and electronics orientated dimension of making. This reflects a phenomenon that Marotta describes as the “cleavage between the artisanal and tech-hardware camps” (Marotta 2021, 640) within maker communities. Computer scientist, engineer and educator Leah Buechley has been active in attending to this gap through working across both electronics, programming and more traditional craft practices such as textiles. She has explored not only the demographics of different maker communities and their motivations but also the different kinds of intellectual approaches that electronics requires (abstract, cerebral) compared to e.g. wood carving (concrete, embodied) (Buechley and Perner-Wilson 2012).

In some cases, specific technologies create communities of practice, especially when they are open-source, making public all of their source code and related manufacturing detail to allow for easy adoption and modification. The Arduino programmable microcontroller which supports connectivity with a plethora of electronic sensors and actuators is a key example, having spawned a huge amount of web-based community activity. Other examples include the Lilypad microcontroller (see Buechley and Mako Hill 2010) and Bela – an open-source digital audio technology specifically designed for sound and musical instrument projects (see Morreale et al. 2017).

Community within EMM

Community identity and interests, project categorization and spaces for community support and sharing, are themes that can be used to examine the historical material of EMM.

The magazine offers a breadth of insights into the community of sound and music orientated makers that it catered to in the early 80s. The first thing to note is the general enthusiasm that greeted the magazine when it arrived in 1981 indicating that it represented a good number of groups involved with sound and music electronics in different ways. As the lead editorial of the first issue proclaimed, “there is a huge public who need to be informed about today’s electronic and electro-music developments,” claiming that the magazine will “directly link for the first time commercial electro-music to the hobbyist market” and going on to cite “audiophiles, teachers and students plus anyone involved in electronics, computing and the music industry” as part of the readership.

Letters pages for the early issues of the publication were highly enthusiastic, supporting the notion that the apparently previously disparate groups of electronics hobbyists and music and sound enthusiasts and professionals could be united in their interests. “Brings my two main hobby interests together,” “superb, well balanced,” “fills a long-felt need” (April 1981), and “a winner in this fast-developing field” (May 1981) were typical of the positive reception that the magazine’s combination of electronics and music received from its readership in the early issues.

One reader who had a letter published in the May 1981 edition describing themselves as a “non-starter” in electronics and who was drawn in by a Vienna LP record offer, was so enthused by the clear format of the magazine that they ordered the parts for the DIY Syntom electronic drum project. Presumably the introduction to the analogue drum synthesizer project highlighting that, for under £15, it would “enable the most popular drum synthesizer effects heard on commercial recordings to be obtained” including “fixed and falling pitched effects” (April 1981, 4) was a motivation for the reader to attempt to build their first electronic sound project.

Such a novice electronics reader would have also been able to audition the sound of the Syntom project before embarking on the potentially laborious process of making it, thanks to the accompanying cassette that EMM produced alongside the magazine to demo the sounds of both newly available commercial products as well as the DIY projects that readers could build for themselves. This was one prominent point of enthusiasm for the EMM readership community in the first year or so of publication:

Congratulations also for the most brilliant concept of a demonstration cassette to go with the reviews and articles in the magazine. This is a major breakthrough and quite unique in my experience. (letters June 1981)

The editorial of the April 1981 issue outlines an enthusiasm from the readership for this “aural compliment” to the magazine explaining how the recordings of electronic instruments provide a more objective response to their capabilities. It also points out that the cassette enables readers to stay abreast of the latest and most expensive developments in instrument technology. This point is supported by a reader’s letter the following month who finds the tapes useful for “people who do not get the opportunity of hearing and comparing organ sounds unless we take a trip to Liverpool or some other big city” and who is keen on the idea that the magazine can “bring the sound to the readers home by post” (May 1981). Crucially, from the DIY and Maker perspective the cassettes provided in “the best stereo quality we can get, a means of assessing for yourself what our electro-music projects sound like” (Editorial April 1981).

Introduced by editor Mike Beecher, the demo tapes included both a technical presentation of possible sounds and pre-sets of different technologies as well as extracts of compositional and experimental sections demonstrating those sounds in a creative context. Cassette 1 included a number of solo sound demos of the completed DIY Syntom project in isolation and in use alongside a traditional acoustic drum kit. Cassette 2, accompanying the May 1981 issue demonstrated a number of simple maker projects from that month (radio, signal generator, metronome and mixer) in creative combination: “add some echo and reverberation, vary the tape speed and you start to make a different kind of electronic music that is great fun to experiment with” (EMM Demo 2, 23’49”). A compliment to the Syntom, the Synwave was demoed in cassette 3. Described in the project article as offering sea-wave, wind, cymbal and woodblock, sounds, the cassette demo of the project includes long whooshing sections of filtered white noise, short percussive sounds fed through an echo effect and a section of Synwave electronic handclap sounds played along to a drum machine reminiscent of early 1980s Synth-Pop.

It is evident that the EMM community was partly nurtured and connected through the immediacy and mobility of the audio cassette. Being able to audition the sound of an electronics DIY project before committing to the time and cost of building it, sharing sounds of unobtainable new technologies and getting enthused by creative processes and arrangements of sounds and sound technologies, all contributed to building the EMM community.

However, a struggle with community identity also dogged EMM from its inception. Reflective of the tensions within contemporary maker culture, issues of what kind of materials individuals chose for their sound and music-related projects caused tensions within EMM. These were evidenced through readers’ letters, the editorial pages and through a readership interest survey (rolled out in March 1982) that pre-empted a rebalance of the ratio of electronics making projects to general music and sound technology features.

Primarily the tensions within the early years of EMM seem to have existed between three overlapping areas of interest. First, what might be thought of as traditional electronics interests relating to e.g. soldering components into analogue circuits to make synthesizers and sound processors. Second, home sound-studio enthusiasts keen to make the most of what home recording technology they could afford by learning new interfacing and processing techniques, while also keeping abreast of the latest high end commercial music technologies on the market. And third, an emergent field of interest in computerized sound programming and sound sequencing on the first wave of home computers such as the Sinclair ZX-81 (“available in kit form or fully assembled”). Hanging over all of these overlapping interest areas was a debate relating to the relative importance of traditional musical skill and knowledge within the technological sound making environment.

The first few issues of EMM contained circa 40 pages of electronics construction projects half of which were typically sound or music related. These included the ambitious six-part Matinee organ project (which ended up with its own dedicated technical enquiry desk at Maplin electronics) and the Spectrum synth project which was initially intended as a five-part monthly instalment but ended up being a separate book-publication. By the end of 1981 the amount of DIY electronics projects in EMM, generally took just 10 pages, all of which were sound specific, but mostly with less ambitious outcomes than the Matinee organ and the Spectrum synth. The December 1981 editorial sought to contextualize this shift away from DIY electronics projects:

Now that high quality “personal multi-track” recording is within reach of many musicians, understanding the interfacing and applications of musical instruments is fast becoming an essential part of “doing-it-yourself”. Projects will still be an essential section of E&MM, but the emphasis will be on cost saving designs of the high quality expected from the No. 1 Electro-Music magazine (editorial December 1981)

This emphasis on the DIY techniques of studio practice, connectivity and process rather than deeper “inside the box” electronics technique developed into the Studio sound techniques series from June 1982, which distanced itself from the voltmeters and oscilloscopes of the electronics workbench by claiming in the opening article that “the average ear, once trained, is one of the most sensitive measuring instruments-cum-analysers readily available” (June 1982, 40). Also, the Home electro-musician series which from early 1982 featured case studies of home studios detailing how individuals could get the most out of their home recording set ups through creative musicianship, sound engineering and some basic electronics and sound equipment maintenance know how covered similar territory.

Readers’ letters responding to this shift from electronics-DIY to studio technique-DIY reflect divisions that the publishers were attempting to straddle: “shouldn’t you rename the magazine ‘The Electronic Musician’? What has happened to all the PROJECTS?… . please bring them back” (February 1982). From one reader who built the Harmony generator project detailed in the in the October 1981 issue and found it created some “dramatic sounding polyphonic effects” when used in conjunction with his synthesizers, there is another request for more projects and a plea not to “just become another review magazine” (letters April 1982). However, in October 1981 another reader voiced an opposite concern claiming not to have a huge interest in assembling constructional projects, further lamenting that:

Unfortunately, I am left with the overall impression that music is taking a back seat to the electronic processes of producing it, and that it is perfectly acceptable to have huge racks of equipment when one’s playing skill and general musical ability would be laughed at by a grade two piano student

These sentiments are reflective of another community-identity concern which hung over EMM regarding the relative importance of traditional musical skills and knowledge versus hands-on technology and electronics skills. As the November 1981 editorial outlined:

Understanding and using traditional music notation is often a frustrating and difficult task for many people, particularly for the electronics hobbyist who adeptly constructs a musical project, only to find that his or her eagerness to be creative on a newly-built instrument is thwarted by an inability to write down melodies, rhythms, harmonies or understand the musical concepts involved in its performance.

Tensions between musical and technical communities simmered away for some months, with some readers welcoming a more musical orientation that followed the March 1982 readership survey while others, including one who identified as a musician and a trained electronics engineer, claimed the balance had swung too far in one direction (June 1982). By reply, the editorial team attempted to settle the debate once and for all by claiming that “many electro musicians have neither the ability nor the inclination to build it themselves” and that the readership survey indicated an interest in both the musical and the technical, that these areas were not mutually exclusive, and that the magazine had the balance right (reply to readers letter June 1982). Interestingly, two months later, the August 1982 editorial contained a claim that indicated further reflection had occurred within EMM around the relationship between music, sound and technology within their community. This reflection seemed to extend the November 1981 position above.

What is not realised perhaps is that electronics/computer orientated people are finding a new creativity through their understanding of the new musical instruments. They appear to be acquiring musical skills quicker than musicians learning the necessary technical skills. (editorial August 1982)

Alongside reviews and advertisements of then-new commercial technologies such as the Roland TB303 bass synthesizer/sequencer (April 1982) this reflection somehow seems to foreshadow the explosion of electronically produced popular music that would begin to emerge from bedrooms and home studios through the 1980s and beyond.

Computing within the EMM community

Further divisions within EMM, between emergent computer music interest groups and more traditional sound electronics approaches also reflect divisions within contemporary maker culture. An October 1981 reader’s letter left no doubt which side of the fence he sat on:

this month’s plethora of computer based Composer Cartridges, Micro-music/Alphadec programmer etc. takes the average electronics/music reader well into the hostile and sterile hinterland of a grotesquely computerised future with not a dotted semiquaver or single op amp to reassure him. How one is expected to be creative in such a technology and jargon entwined undergrowth beats me. (letters October 1981)

Others were in agreement: “the audio/music projects are especially welcome so please avoid becoming another tedious computer-orientated magazine” (February 1982). But as the editorial clearly stated in May 1981 there would soon be a time when a musicians essential training would include a basic computer course and the computer was on track to become the “most powerful and flexible musical instrument ever invented” (Editorial May 1981) and it is clear from the positive reception that some letters gave to computing topics that many readers agreed (see letters June 1981, November 1981).

Of course, the worlds of physical construction and computer programming for sound and music were not entirely exclusive within the pages of EMM. The Electric drummer project (beginning in November 1981) offered a DIY assembly of a microprocessor design to implement drum sequencing beyond the simple rhythm pre-sets such as swing and bossa nova, available on home organs of the time. The same issue also contained a related article on using microprocessors in the computing section. The Alphadec 16 synth controller (July 81) was another ambitious project using a microcontroller that could be programmed to create control possibilities for up to 16 monophonic synthesizers offering more “playing power for skilled and unskilled keyboardists” (July 1981, 19). Such DIY microprocessor controlled projects are 1980s equivalents to Arduino projects of the 2000s, sometimes identified as “physical computing.” Unlike Arduino, however, there is no particular mention of open-source approaches in EMM, the concept was still quite new at the time (see Neary 2018) and almost all of what was published in EMM was inherently open source.

Physical community in EMM

The physical community spaces of EMM vary from those in contemporary maker culture. Terms such as “makerspace” or “Fab Lab” did not exist in 1981 though reference to university electronic music facilities and events (e.g. City University feature October 1981, Cardiff University feature April 1982) give a sense that educational campuses would have facilitated some physical community extension to the magazine’s activities. The closest EMM equivalent to the Maker faire meanwhile, seems to be events such as the Hands on show and the Breadboard exhibition where EMM staff were able to demonstrate the Spectrum synth to “packed audiences” (January 1982 editorial). In March 1982 EMM ran a preview of a new international music show in London where, alongside representatives from recording studios, music suppliers and electronics companies such as Casio, EMM were demonstrating their DIY projects and allowing their community to “make some music with E&MM instruments” (EMM March 1982, 61). Other international music and technology shows such as Music messe in Frankfurt and NAMM the US were also covered by the magazine, bridging the international music and audio industry together with DIY interests.

Small commercial facilities are another physical community space depicted in the pages of EMM that are interesting to consider alongside contemporary accounts of maker culture. The magazine ran a number of Industry profile features that give an insight into a manufacturing orientated British and European music technology industry of the time. An August 1981 feature on Yorkshire based loudspeaker manufacturer Fane acoustics shows workshop and factory facilities including a machine shop for loudspeaker chassis pressing and the hand winding and soldering of voice coils alongside the gluing, spraying and anechoic testing of products all on the same site by a staff of around 120. A larger manufacturing operation is depicted in the profile of German organ manufacturer Wersi electronics who made DIY kits of electronic organs that could be assembled by users with little or no electronics knowledge. The Wersi factory feature shows PCB etching and computer-controlled drilling alongside skilled working with wood, plastics and textiles as well as wiring and metalwork all necessary to produce the organ kits. The May 1981 industry profile of Electronic dream plant describes how musician and engineer Adrian Wagner progressed from setting up a recording studio to manufacturing the Wasp synthesizer, selling the first 100 hand assembled units in 3 hours and struggling to get the next batch made due to component supply issues.

These features depict a scale of sound and music technology manufacturing that is not obviously entangled with aggressive global and corporate pressures of cheap materials and labour, although the shift towards sound technology production in Japan, Korea, and China is certainly evident elsewhere in the pages of EMM (e.g. the Roland UK feature of November 1981). The industry profile features provide evidence of localized communities of skilled, hands-on makers working with materials and software in facilities similar to contemporary makerspaces and Fab Labs.

A comparison could be made with these small and medium sound technology manufacturing interests of the early 1980s and some of the contemporary manufacturing interests that have grown out of today’s DIY music scene, that make products sometimes marketed as “boutique” (Flood 2016; Pinch 2016; Richards 2013). These modern companies vary in size from loose collectives of designers, artists, makers and educators such as with Bastl instruments, to single person operations such as Bug brand, benefiting from the ease of access to a global marketplace afforded by the web. The small manufacturing interests of the early 1980s would have relied more heavily on a physical workplace community and market, in order to batch produce and sell their products.

Activism

The idea of some kind of activism or resistance is present in much contemporary maker culture. Marotta (2021) identifies maker communities unified in rejecting a sense of global and corporate forms of work, manufacture and supply of goods. The paper notes that such communities sometimes even reject the term “maker,” to protect themselves from any “political and economic fantasies and/or criticisms that the media or academics have developed about making” (Marotta 2021, 639). Kuznetsov and Paulos (2010) make connections to earlier rebellious and anti-consumerist DIY initiatives (Kuznetsov and Paulos 2010, 296), referencing the photocopied, hand collaged “zines” of 1970s Punk culture as an antecedent to the contemporary maker scene. This idea of engagement in making as an individual, practical and creative resistance to the “hegemonic structures of mass production in the industrialized world” is also identified by Tanenbaum et al (2013, 2609). Here, the standard model of user-as-consumer is challenged and instead user-as-creative-appropriator, hacker, tinkerer, artist, and even co-designer or co-engineer are suggested as a more accurate reflection of maker activities.

This more active and democratic engagement with the internal design of things is reflected in the adoption of open-source technologies that allow for a deep level of re-engineering or tinkering by anyone. This is the antithesis of the technological “black box” – a term often associated with technological control and secrecy exerted by a military industrial complex for reasons including the protection of security, intellectual property, market dominance, and planned obsolescence (Ames et al. 2014; Hertz and Parikka 2012; Snake-Beings 2018).

The idea that contemporary maker culture necessarily represents a kind of anti-consumerist rebelliousness also contains tensions. As Tanenbaum et al. (2013) set out, makers of all kinds rely on a mainstream economy that allows for a surplus of cheap and available materials and tools. This situation is driven by global supply chains, overproduction of goods and regular obsolescence. The benefit of this — particularly for makers working with electronics – is a constant and cheap supply of components for use in projects either scavenged from discarded consumer goods or purchased new via the global market place. Even maker-scene-specific tools and technologies such as the Arduino or a 3D printer, benefit from global supply and manufacture chains that keep prices low.

Further tensions relating to the idea of making as activism are outlined by Lindtner, Bardzell and Bardzell (2016) who highlight an inherent techno solutionism present in much commentary on the activist nature of making, implying that technology can “unilaterally solve difficult problems” (Lindtner, Bardzell, and Bardzell 2016, 1390) which are often also social, political and economic problems. Similarly, Sivek (2011) in a review of early MAKE magazines and Maker Fairs, identifies a technological utopianism, implying that technology may be able to deliver some utopian future.

Activism in EMM

In contrast to these activist claims relating to contemporary maker culture there is little direct evidence of activism in the pages of EMM beyond promoting the idea of making your own sound technologies as a money saving exercise (December 1981 letter and editorial). This is also in contrast to accounts of older cultures of sonic making, including radio ham communities of the early twentieth century (Douglas 1993). Generally, the tone of EMM is humble in the wake of a fast-expanding global market of sound technology and the readership appear keen to learn about and gain experience of electronic music making tools that may be difficult to build, obtain and access. The politics of these technologies and their production are not particularly in question, giving a sense that hegemonic structures of mass production were less of a concern. As illustrated in the Industry profile features, there were less obvious impacts of global and corporate forms of work in the Euro-centric focus of the magazine in 1981. Furthermore, all of this is set within a latent techno solutionism, where the pages of EMM assume that technology will generally enable better sounding music, though this is tempered slightly through the debates on musical skill vs technology described above.

A small glimpse of activism can possibly be identified in one reader’s letter who in June 1982 wrote that he would like to see more advertisements from electronic suppliers and less from the “major Japanese concerns.” Presumably such “Japanese concerns” included Casio and Roland who were at this time advertising a number of new products including the TB303 and TR606 bass and drum sequencers. The same reader felt that EMM spent too much time reviewing commercially available instruments and made the appeal “let’s design and build our own gear” (EMM letters June 1982).

The magazine of course did support the sentiment to “build our own gear” through arrangements that must have also been commercially motivated on some level given its relationship with Maplin electronics who were a major UK supplier for electronics components and materials from a global marketplace. This industrial/maker tie in, reflective of contemporary synergies, is evident in such projects as the Word maker, the “first ever solid-state speech project” published in June 1981. This project used synthesized speech chips made by US company Texas instruments who were at the time producing toys such as Speak and spell. Such a project would have existed on the back of the large production runs of commercially produced speaking toys and calculators etc. and in turn would have opened new markets for Texas instruments via suppliers such as Maplin electronics. Further commercial tie-ins are evident in — for example — the May 1981 issue which ran a number of projects using a copper strip electronics prototyping board called Veroboard, a free sample of which was also included with the issue. In July 1981 the Alphadec synthesizer controller project meanwhile, was littered with advertisements for the necessary Tangerine computer systems products needed to build it.

So, while there is little direct evidence in EMM of the kind of maker activism that is claimed to exist in the contemporary maker scene, the increasing influence of global markets is discernible and the desire to acquire technology cheaply and “build our own gear” is clear. Also, the industrial/maker symbiosis that would create tensions for more consciously activist makers of the future is already evident in the pages of EMM.

Learning and teaching

Learning, self-advancement and knowledge sharing are key themes underpinning both contemporary maker culture and the world of EMM. These activities support community building and contribute to the open-source politics of democratic access to knowledge, skills and resources. In the early days of EMM, educational concern for advancing practical and theoretical skills was also complimented by a regular education section aimed at teachers and school pupils, claiming that “education in its broadest sense is therefore one of the key aspects of this magazine” (June 1981, 93).

Learning new concepts and skills was the second most cited motivation for taking part in contemporary online maker platforms and forums in Kuznetsov and Paulos’s (2010) study of online communities. Interestingly, the study also highlighted how learning by teaching and sharing was clearly identified as a method for advancing one’s own skills and knowledge (Kuznetsov and Paulos 2010, 302). Opportunities for critique and feedback on work in progress and media-rich modes of online interaction were also shown as enablers of knowledge transfer (Kuznetsov and Paulos 2010, 303).

EMM reflects this ethos of learning by teaching and an awareness of the importance of media-rich experiences as part of knowledge transfer. Circuit maker, a regular project-based feature in early editions of the magazine encouraged readers to contribute electronic project ideas for publication. The letters pages of EMM also worked as a space for readers to point out errors or publicly query problems experienced with trying to build published projects – sometimes to a highly specific level of technical detail (e.g. September 1981). Responding to such constant requests for support must have been quite a commitment for the editorial team who would have lacked the support of wider peer to peer community interaction that contemporary web-based channels allow.

In July 1982 the editorial of EMM specifically encouraged “musicians and technicians at different levels” to contribute to the magazine by suggesting material for either Circuit maker, Home-electro musician, (the case study feature of readers home studios), or Cassette reviews, an opportunity for readers to have their home recordings reviewed. All manner of recordings were encouraged from “a demo-type tape, an independent cassette only release, or anything in between” (editorial March 1982 p59). Any recording technique for the readers demos was also acceptable, it being noted that most were produced using a “sound-on-sound” technique of bouncing between standard cassette machines or perhaps a “small 4-track.”

These media-rich modes of interaction and knowledge transfer were also supported through the EMM audio cassette which, aside from offering the sounds of EMM projects and commercial equipment, progressed to include tracks produced by those readers featured in Home electro-musician. EMM demo tape six features Johnny Demestos’ track Working in a factory, a poppy, blues influenced song with lots of melodic electronic parts alongside electric guitars and a programmed drum track. This followed Demestos’ February 1982 appearance in EMM where he describes being able to progress his recording technique from crystal microphones and portable cassette recorders to the latest Teac 4-track following the receipt of some insurance money.

Multipassionary constructions

Further learning and teaching themes connect contemporary Maker culture with the world of EMM. These include interdisciplinarity, student-centred, authentic (real world) learning opportunities, problem-based learning and improvisational problem solving and tinkering (Schad and Jones 2020, 72). Mann (2014, 32) quotes Einstein as saying “love is a better master than duty” to underpin his emphasis on the importance of authentic making as making that is meaningful and which the maker feels passionate about. Mann goes on to combine this notion of passion with the multidisciplinary practices of maker culture that combine art, science and engineering, coining the term “multipassionary” to describe authentic making that can move between the technical and the aesthetic.

Much of these active, student-centred and “multipassionary” approaches to learning can be linked back to constructivist and constructionist learning theories as explored by Schad and Jones (2020) and Halverson and Sheridan (2014) who note that MIT computer scientist Seymor Papert’s theory of constructionism has led to him being credited as the “father of the maker movement” (Halverson and Sheridan 2014, 497). Whilst the notion of constructivism captures the idea of individuals building knowledge structures through play and experimental enquiry, constructionism refers to when the learner is consciously engaged in “constructing a public entity” (Schad and Jones 2020, 66) or “making something shareable” (Halverson and Sheridan 2014, 498). This foregrounding of embodied production-based experiences, rather than formal and abstract reasoning opens the learning experience up to a more diverse set of learners. Turkle and Papert (1990) note that such approaches are compatible with fields such as computer programming which might typically be thought of as existing within a purely abstract and mathematical context.

Interdisciplinarity is evident throughout EMM straddling the creative focus of sound and music as well as technical and scientific understanding, affording learning opportunities across fields of interest. The passion for learning through DIY within EMM relates to sound and music making with both commercially available sound technologies, and through electronic fabrication and tinkering at component level. Despite some tensions, the EMM community had a passion for both. By sitting on the boundaries between music, commercial sound technology and the electronics hobby market there was ample opportunity for “multi-passions” to spill over from one field to the other.

Descriptions of sounds that could be created through constructing DIY projects are an example of one way the magazine drew readers with a passion for sound and music into a world of electronics DIY. Sometimes these descriptions were aligned to a commercial measure of quality as with the Matinee organ project, which promised to sound “every bit as good as commercial organs” (March 1981). The Spectrum synth meanwhile offered a “vast range of sounds not possible with basic synthesisers” including “bell, gong and chime sounds” as well as “strong, voice box like sounds” (March 1981) and “elusive sounds with complex harmonics such as engines and creaking doors” (May 1981). The Hexdrum project of August 1981 claimed to offer “sounds of the future as simple to make as drumming your fingers” and the reader who contributed to Circuit maker in December 1981 encouraged others to try his modifications which would create the sounds of passable cymbals and “rapid gun fire.” The Harmonizer project of October 1981 promised to “thicken up” sound tremendously, noting that most musicians could not “savour the delights” of commercial harmonizers due to cost. Less technologically in-depth articles such as Organ talk, Hot wiring your guitar, Disco TEK, and Guide to electronic music techniques were also geared towards drawing in the reader whose passions might be more directly aligned to sound and music, but who might begin to extend their interests and deepen their technical understanding.

“Multipassionary” learning within EMM was supported by constructionist opportunities to share outcomes both sonic and technological through cassettes, articles and letters. Beyond this and in the pre-internet world of EMM it is possible to imagine further sharing opportunities occurring at live music events, in the bedrooms and homes of enthusiasts, in school and university clubs and events, and at workplaces where an employee’s musical hobby might have aligned with the activities of a small to medium sound technology manufacturing business.

Experimentalism

Experimentalism is an aspect of learning through DIY which is particularly relevant to contemporary maker cultures converging around sound and media art. A lineage of this is often traced back to the experimental music practices of John Cage, David Tudor, Gordon Mumma and Alvin Lucier, among others, who built “beautiful oddball circuits seemingly out of pure ignorance and good luck” (Collins 2006, 80) through the 1960s and 1970s. One key idea that emerges from this creative tradition is that of opening the black box of technology and tinkering with the materials within, with no expert knowledge, pre conceived idea or design of what sounds may result (see Hertz and Parikka 2012; Pinch 2016; Snake-Beings 2018). Such approaches may shun traditional understandings and orthodox theories (both technological and musical) in a context where unusual, unexpected and even unreliable sounds are desirable in creating original sound works and performances.

Snake-Beings (2018) explores the relationship between sound, experimentalism and DIY, through a materialist philosophical perspective, informed by STS and media archaeology. Through studies of the building of lo fidelity sound making and processing devices using discarded and repurposed objects, a case is made for experimentation, risk taking, and learning through making mistakes. This draws on Hertz and Parikka (2012) who use a media archaeological perspective of technological obsolescence and black boxing to explore creative DIY practices and circuit bending – the art of randomly connecting points on a circuit board to elicit new sounds from cheap battery-operated sound toys with little or no understanding of any technical theory informing the practice. Their paper describes the work of renowned circuit bender Reed Ghazala whose web site bears the title Anti-theory and whose work involves circuit bending vintage Texas instruments toys such as the Speak and spell. Pinch (2016) conducts an ethnography of circuit bending and also describes his own sonic experiments with his handmade synthesizer which exhibits a number of unexpected and random behaviours which are considered desirable by fellow members of his performing band.

Snake-Beings (2018) describes these approaches as the “perpetual prototype,” and Flood (2016) the “permanent prototype,” where a playful attitude of creative experimentation with electronic circuits forms part of the process of music creation. Collins contrasts such liberating approaches to the “laborious analytical work that had previously accompanied most electronic engineering, even in hobbyist and musical circles” (Collins 2009, 277) while Mann (2014, 32) suggests “it is possible that some of these things may never be useful in any traditional sense – we should be willing to tinker without having to make a plan and a Gantt chart first.” Connecting creative experimentalism directly back to political activism Kori and Novak note that the “emphasis on transitory events rather than fixed objects suggests an alternative politics of social aesthetics that challenges the commodity form of art” (Kori and Novak 2020, 395). Experimental music and sound are the perfect context for this unorthodox, process-based approach to the building and bending of new and unusual objects and technologies, learning new techniques and making new discoveries experientially along the way.

However, for all the contemporary headlines and advertised advantages of a non-expert, hands on, materialist, anti-theory approach to creating and hacking electronic sound devices there are questions around to what extent a genuinely experimental approach can be sustained before the need for a deeper theoretical understanding arises. As Kori and Novak (2020, 404) describe:

Artist and engineer Andreas Siagian lamented that after years of conducting introductory circuit bending workshops “even though I’m happy to see peoples’ responses when they join the workshop and see the results, I get tired of hearing the same sounds over and over again … . it’s like reinventing the wheel every time”

And Pinch (2016, 43) points out that “even demons are in danger of becoming standardised” when presenting the experiences of a circuit bender who found that after a while many of the possible sounds produced by the practice were often the same both through personal experimentation and in listening to the work of others online. Richards (2013) reflects a similar issue when posing the question “whoever talks about the music of circuit bender Reed Ghazala?” in comparison to how often his DIY making practices are referenced.

Collins (2009) describes how after the initial thrill of creating unexpected sounds from hacking electronics wears off, many experimental makers and artists might move onto more involved approaches requiring a deeper understanding of the field, some even moving into software programming (Collins 2009, 277). In some cases, development from experimental sound making leads to the production of batch or boutique commercial sound technology products. This demonstrates how the trial-and-error procedures associated with contemporary circuit bending and hardware hacking can act as a gateway to a level of expertise and skill associated with more traditional industrial design and engineering.

It is interesting to consider the 1980s world of EMM alongside some of these experimental, contemporary attitudes. Existing – as it did – at a time before practices such as circuit bending were named as such, the sound electronics projects of EMM are highly orthodox, utilizing tried and tested electronics techniques to, in many instances, emulate commercially available sound technologies and implement established techniques. It is quite conceivable that this is exactly the kind of “laborious and analytical” approach that Collins refers to above. Alongside the step-by-step guides to ambitious sound and music DIY projects in EMM, there were numerous articles such as the Starting point series by Robert Penfold that took readers through the basic foundations of electronics theory and practice.

The EMM Word maker project of June 1981 provides a case to compare the two approaches of orthodox, and experimental within sonic making activities. The Word maker project used the very same voice synthesis technologies from Texas instruments that became a mainstay of the circuit bending scene some 20-years later through Speak and spell toys bought in charity shops and rescued from attics. In the EMM project the reader is taken through the full circuit connectivity, instruction sets and address codes of the TMS5100 voice synthesis processor-integrated circuit. The same edition included an industry profile of the UK manufacturing arm of Texas in Bedford, showing computer aided manufacturing and production from silicon wafer through to product testing. In the post millennial circuit bending scene the same devices and products became firmly associated with the anti-theory and anti-consumerist approaches of randomly connecting points on circuit boards to create unpredictable sounds and noisy compositions with the potential to destroy the toys altogether in the process. Interestingly, there is a glimpse of this noisy future in the editorial of the June 1981 EMM edition when it is suggested that the electro-musician “will have plenty of fun ‘mis-using’ word addresses in the Word Maker project to create original vocal textures at different speeds” (EMM June 1981). The Word Maker project illustrates how EMM supported an experimental approach to sound and music making but maintained a more orthodox approach to electronics design and build.

The less experimental tendencies of EMM were recognized by one reader of the time. In a November 1982 letter there is a call for the magazine to become more “experimental”, more “technical” and less reliant on “safe articles and projects.” The reader suggests that EMM take a “few tips” from the US publications Synapse and Polyphony that emerged from the 1970s with a focus on DIY for analogue synthesis. The letter also takes issue with the assumption that synthesizers are always assumed to be keyboard-based and outlines plans for developing an audience interactive sound sculpture. The reader does conclude, however, that “E&MM is very good and I’ll go on buying in the hope that you’ll get even better” (EMM letters November 1982)

Conclusions

Through a close reading of editorial content, readers’ letters and articles within EMM it has been possible to compare a culture of DIY sound and electronics from the early 1980s with the equivalent contemporary scene. This has revealed sociotechnical shifts of the last 40 or so years around the creative practice of making technologies that make sound.

The early 1980s saw the beginning of an increase in availability of more affordable, more powerful and more integrated sound technologies from an increasingly global market of production and distribution which expanded the possibilities of home recording and sound production considerably. The pages of EMM capture this transition through tensions within the readership between those wanting more DIY sound electronics projects and those more interested in reviews and user tips relating to new commercially available equipment. These tensions raise questions around what actually constitutes DIY within sound and music of the time. Was it achieving the maximum range of sonic possibilities from newly available home recording and synthesis systems, or learning electronics and understanding the inner workings of sound technology? Both approaches were represented through the short life span of a magazine which worked hard to support different practices focussed on the inside and outside of the black box of sound technology.

Further sociotechnical shifts reflected in the pages of EMM concern the emerging possibilities of sound coming together with home computing. Some readers feared this apparently sterile and impenetrable new technology which lacked the assurances of physical components, and contributed to concerns of a decline in traditional musical skills. A more harmonious future of human musicality sitting comfortably alongside analogue and digital technology is hinted at in EMM editorials that claim the computer will become the “most powerful and flexible musical instrument ever invented” (Editorial May 1981) and that “electronics/computer orientated people …… appear to be acquiring musical skills quicker than musicians learning the necessary technical skills (editorial August 1982).

Despite the tensions between doing-it-yourself with commercial sound technology, component level assembly, early computer sound technology, and traditional musical skill, EMM drew a community together through a motivation for experimenting with and expanding the possibilities of sound.

The activist tendencies of contemporary sonic DIY communities who emphasize a process driven, anti-commodity approach to technology, in opposition to large scale and corporate global production, are not discernible in the pages of EMM. These attitudes were likely spurred on in the early 2000s by a sense of prescribed control over parameters of sound, offered by digital and factory pre-set technologies of the time. Combined with an affordability and even excess of such technologies, DIY communities began dismantling, hacking and bending the circuits inside technological black boxes in search of new sonic possibilities as “the material world made a comeback” (Collins 2009, 296). The global mass production that these attitudes are pitched against is emergent in the pages of EMM. The EMM community, however, were more attuned to the possibilities of imitating and integrating commercial sound technology with DIY approaches than they were to challenging, undoing or hacking it. This difference in attitudes is apparent through comparing the post-2000s practice of circuit bending Texas instruments Speak and spell toys and the carefully constructed EMM Word maker project and industry profile of Texas’ manufacturing plant in the UK.

Reflective of this less activist position, the approach to sound electronics in EMM is an orthodox one, seeking to equip readers motivated by creating new experimental sounds with an understanding of tried and tested electronics principles and techniques. This is considered a potentially laborious approach by the newer generation of anti-theory hackers that emerged in the 2000s. However, the more recent generations of makers occasionally denounce the sonic limitations of shaping electronic sounds with only minimal knowledge of electronics, and go on to develop more refined technical understanding. In some cases, this leads to manufacturing boutique and batch produced sound technology at a scale reflective of some of the smaller industrial concerns profiled in the pages of EMM.

Contemporary DIY communities and EMM are unified in their commitment to learning, teaching and knowledge sharing as core values enriched by an interdisciplinary passion for sound and music. This is supported by a foregrounding of embodied production-based experiences such as sounds, music, technologies and technique, understood through constructionist theories of learning. In a contemporary web-mediated context this is instantaneously achieved through peer to peer forums and media-rich social interactions alongside physical workshop spaces and events. In the world of EMM, the same support exists through readers contributions to print media, the submission of demo tapes, through EMM’s distribution of an audio cassette, at trade and industry fairs and on educational campuses.

Highlighting these nuanced contrasts and similarities between the early 1980s world of EMM and post-2000s maker culture fills a gap in the history and understanding of DIY practices that convene around sound. The early and mid-twentieth century influences within the field are relatively well represented, by reviewing materials such as EMM it is possible to include more recent influences, resources, cultures and technologies in understanding the motivation to make things that make sound.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jon Pigott

Jon Pigott is a senior lecturer based within Cardiff School of Art and Design teaching across undergraduate and post-graduate programmes, and supervising PhD candidates. Jon’s research and creative practice is within the fields of sound art, kinetic sculpture, science and technology studies (STS) and sound studies. His research and teaching are informed by a practice-based approach which includes digital and traditional fabrication processes and hand-made electronics. Prior to entering academia Jon worked in the music and audio industry helping to bring numerous high-profile music and film projects to fruition.

Aidan Taylor

Aidan Taylor is a designer maker with a background in electronic musical instrument design. His research interest is in the world of making communities/cultures, makerspaces, repair and social manufacture. He has worked in academia, audio design and manufacturing and was previously the chairperson of Medrau Maindee Makers charity which created Newport Makerspace/Creudy Casnewydd. Today, Aidan is Technical Director of HUG by LAUGH and is employed by Maindee Unlimited to project manage the Newport Circular Economy Network.