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"New-Method" No. 6

We have published the email bulletin "New-Method" with our works and guest contributions, and this sixth issue features the musician and quantum physician Mark Sadgrove for the contributor.

[Contribution]

Homemade
Mark Sadgrove (Musician, Quantum Physician)

Homemade means?:

Anyone can make an instrument.  Even people with little interest in performing do it all the time, tapping on a biscuit tin or the top of a table.  If you can wire together a piezo and a guitar jack (or afford it's expensive twin, the contact mic) you can turn these everyday objects into amplified sound makers.

This DIY aspect of homemade instruments is part of their charm and doubtless there is a skill spectrum with DIYers at one end, and Stradavarius at the other.  However, for me, the true value in making your own sound making device arises from a more sophisticated concept.  I'm thinking of something that famous physicist Richard Feynman said: "That which I cannot build, I do not understand."  Conversely, with a homemade instrument, there's a higher chance that you understand the way that the sound is created and that your audience too will better understand the source of the sound when they see you perform.

Scientific methods:

Furthermore, there's another way that instrument building mirrors an important aspect of science.  You need to realize a concept which exists only in your head by creating an object in the physical world.  For those outside the scientific world who are interested in rigour, this may sound less fundamental than the widely known scientific method: conjecture and test.  And yet in the world of science, it seems to me that another method is more important: build and discover.  That is, conceive of and create a unique object that allows new natural phenomena to be observed.

Instrument building conforms almost perfectly to this alternative scientific prescription.  You conceptualise an instrument, build it and discover the sound it makes, which is often different to the sound you might have imagined.

[Web Works of the New-Methodicists]

[Information]

- "New-Method at Nanahari" Mar. 20, 2011, Nanahari, Tokyo. http://www.ftftftf.com/

New-Method plays Method Old Maid / New-Method plays New-Method Old Maid

- "Final Income Tax Return" http://7x7whitebell.net/new-method/fitr_e.html

- "New-Method at Akaruiheya"http://7x7whitebell.net/new-method/akaruiheya_e.html

- "New-Method" official webpage has been updated.  http://7x7whitebell.net/new-method/

- Takahiro Hirama has updated his website.  http://hrmtkhr.web.fc2.com/

- Shogo Baba has updated his website. http://7x7whitebell.net/

- Hideki Nakazawa has updated his website. http://aloalo.co.jp/nakazawa/

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[Editor's Note]

Seeing New-Methods constantly carrying out Japanese events such as "Hatsumode," "Bean-Throwing Festival (Demons Out! Lucks In!)" or "Final Tax Return" every month, I've recently come to feel them charming.  Now, what would they do the next month? (Kaido)