Coppice was founded by Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer in Chicago in 2009, as an inquiry into the capture and generation of music and its relationship to its physical sources.

Its compound studies include Bellows & Electronics (prepared pump organs, shruti boxes, and tape processors) between 2009–2014, and Physical Modeling & Modular Syntheses between 2014–2018; focusing on the interactions between direct and reproduced sound, and the perceptual links between original and emulated sources, respectively.

Its third study in Phonography & Fiction (in progress since 2018) scrutinizes the dynamics between its previous two studies, and their relationship to architecture and time: the acoustic preservation and obsolescence of the Yerkes Observatory’s refractor and reflector telescopes in Williams Bay being the locus of investigation.

With sustained interest in sound’s capacity to cross domains, Coppice crafts pathways between music and technology in a cross-disciplinary language, resulting in work that is an overarching documentation of experimental music in-formation. Operating in cycles of instrument construction and modification, recordings, and live presentations, its productions incorporate sound design, sculpture, installation, software, images, and video.

Estey Expander Module

Ten channel microphone preamp designed for the installation of spot microphones into an Estey Pump Organ that had been prepared with very specific placements of reeds. The ten microphones have independent attenuation control and are mixed into two groups of five an sent to separate outputs. All control and power is connected outside the organ and fed through to the inside through a flat ribbon in order to keep from making any permanent modifications to the antique instrument.

Present in:

Soft Crown
Soft Crown Transparencies

Origin: Designed and constructed by Joseph Kramer
Year: 2013